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Projects: Projects for Investigator
Reference Number EP/M000397/1
Title Seabed ploughing: modelling for infrastructure installation
Status Completed
Energy Categories Renewable Energy Sources(Ocean Energy) 30%;
Renewable Energy Sources(Wind Energy) 30%;
Fossil Fuels: Oil Gas and Coal(Oil and Gas, Other oil and gas) 30%;
Other Power and Storage Technologies(Electricity transmission and distribution) 10%;
Research Types Basic and strategic applied research 100%
Science and Technology Fields ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (General Engineering and Mineral & Mining Engineering) 75%;
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES (Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences) 25%;
UKERC Cross Cutting Characterisation Not Cross-cutting 100%
Principal Investigator Professor C Augarde
No email address given
Engineering
Durham University
Award Type Standard
Funding Source EPSRC
Start Date 30 November 2014
End Date 31 March 2018
Duration 40 months
Total Grant Value £290,009
Industrial Sectors Construction; Energy
Region North East
Programme NC : Engineering
 
Investigators Principal Investigator Professor C Augarde , Engineering, Durham University (99.999%)
  Other Investigator Dr W M Coombs , Engineering, Durham University (0.001%)
  Industrial Collaborator Project Contact , Soil Machine Dynamics Ltd (0.000%)
Project Contact , Lloyd's Register EMEA (0.000%)
Project Contact , Cathie Associates Inc, USA (0.000%)
Project Contact , Saipem S.p.A., Italy (0.000%)
Web Site
Objectives
Abstract Soil ploughing, an activity carried out by man for thousands of years for agriculture, is now used at a much larger scale on the seabed to connect offshore energy production and generation devices to the supply network. In the next 50 years many more of these offshore devices (wind, wave, current and oil & gas) will be installed, meaning that considerably more seabed ploughing will be undertaken. However, we do not possess the same level of understanding of the mechanical and hydraulic processes associated with soil ploughing as we have developed for other soil-structure interaction problems. This means that ploughing schemes and equipment have to be designed on the basis of semi-empirical and conservative approaches, leading to financial uncertainty. In this project, new computational methods will be applied to the simulation of seabed ploughing to provide better estimates of key parameters such as the towing force and speed of ploughing in a given seabed deposit along with insights into plough stability. Given the likely ploughing activity in the next 20-50 years in UK waters and elsewhere, we expect that this new predictive approach will result in major savings for industry
Publications (none)
Final Report (none)
Added to Database 19/01/15