ABSTRACT

To avoid the occurrence of pipeline on-bottom (lateral) instability, i.e. the breakout of the pipe from its original site, the seabed must provide enough soil resistance to balance the hydrodynamic loads upon the untrenched pipeline. For pipeline geotechnical engineers, one of the main concerns for pipeline on-bottom stability design is to properly predict the ultimate soil resistance in the severe ocean environments, and to further determine the thickness of coating layers based on nominal pipe weight (Det Norske Veritas 2007).