Investigation of trench effect on fatigue response of steel catenary risers using an effective stress analysis

The design of Steel Catenary Risers (SCR) heavily relies on the interaction between the riser and seabed in the touchdown zone (TDZ). To accurately estimate the SCR-seabed stiffness, the soil behaviour must be assessed in two main phases: (1) during cyclic SCR motions, which generate excess pore pressure, leading to soil softening and remoulding in the TDZ, and (2) during inactivity periods throughout the SCR’s lifespan, causing dissipation of excess pore pressure associated with the consolidation state. The latter was neglected by the existing non-linear hysteretic soil models, which are based on the total stress approach. In the current study, a global riser analysis was conducted and the consolidation effect was incorporated using an effective stress framework. Long-term soil stiffness was determined by capturing both the remoulding and consolidation effects, which are respectively associated with the damage accumulation during the SCR cyclic motions and soil strength recovery during the intervening pause period. The constructed model was then combined with a new methodology named Hybrid Trench Model to investigate how the consolidation effect contributes to the fatigue performance in different trench depths. Stochastic fatigue analysis showed that the consolidation effect might increase the damage by around 10%-40% over the long-term assessment.