Appraisal of Sensitivity Correlations on Data from Clays of Western Indian Offshore

Abstract

Sensitivity (S_t) of cohesive soils is defined as the ratio of peak undisturbed shear strength (s_u) to the remoulded shear strength (s_ur) at the same water content. In offshore geotechnics, sensitivity is an important design parameter for clays especially where strength of remoulded clays is an important input in foundation analysis and design, for example, in design of some anchors in deep waters, assessment of lateral and vertical pile capacity in the zone disturbed by jack-up spudcan penetration. In many instances in offshore projects, results of laboratory or field tests for remoulded shear strength of clays are not available and in such cases empirical correlations are used which correlate either the remoulded strength or the sensitivity directly with other index parameters measured or derived in laboratory. Presently such correlations have not been derived or investigated for the fields of western Indian offshore and the available correlations in literature may not be applicable for the clayey soils of Western Indian Offshore. This paper discusses the results of evaluation of published correlations, for the soil data from top 30 m of soil profile from various fields of Western Indian Offshore. Results of attempts to develop new correlations for the specific application for the soils of Western Indian offshore are also presented.