Offshore Experience with Laterally Loaded Piles

Abstract

The soil reaction for laterally loaded piles is generally determined by the methods described in API Recommended Practice 2A. The number of offshore platforms currently installed worldwide is testimony to the success of these methods. These design methods are based, for reasons of cost, on small diameter piles. Large diameter piles are rarely instrumented for lateral capacity, and such data as are available from jacket piles are subject to axial as well as lateral loading. Pile dead- man anchors used for pipeline initiation are subject to lateral loads — depending on pipe size — in the range 10–100 tonnes, and constitute a data source for confirmation of design data at high loading. This is particularly true for short piles where the pile toe is allowed to move so that any permanent set will be a function of soil plasticity rather than pile elasticity. This Paper presents a comparison between theoretical and observed pile performance under these conditions.