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Multiscale investigations on the failure mechanism of submarine sand slopes with coupled CFD-DEM
Publikationstyp
Conference Paper
Date Issued
2018
Sprache
English
Author(s)
TORE-URI
Start Page
1485
End Page
1492
Citation
European Conference on Numerical Methods in Geotechnical Engineering (NUMGE 2018)
Contribution to Conference
Scopus ID
In terms of the construction of gravity offshore foundation systems, the short- and longterm stability of submarine sand slopes is of crucial importance. The heavy structures cannot be placed directly on the sea ground. The weak topsoil has to be excavated to place the structure on more stable ground, which results in a pit. A steep but stable inclination of its slopes would thereby meet both economic and ecologic interests as the disturbed area is reduced. Different hydrodynamic disturbances as tidal streaming or waves are hereby influencing the stability of the submarine slopes. The changes in pore water pressure due to the hydrodynamic disturbances and the interaction of the soil grains with the surrounding pore water significantly influences the stability of the slope and its failure mechanism. To take into account these effects, the numerical simulations are carried out with a multiscale approach, namely a coupling of the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and the Discrete Element Method (DEM). In this method, the soil particles are modelled on a microscale level, tracking velocity and position in a lagrangian way. The fluid phase is modelled at a macroscale level using CFD. The numerical modelling aims on investigating the effect of tidal streaming on submarine sand slopes with different packing densities to take into account the influence of dilatancy and contractancy. © 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, UK.
More Funding Information
The authors thank the German Research Foundation (DFG) for funding this project under the project number GR 1024/22-1 and Christoph Goniva and Alice Hager from DCS Computing for the support in the calibration of the material parameters and in the numerical simulations.