Undrained Penetration Using Rate-Dependent and Strain-Softening Tresca Model for Offshore Geotechnical Problems

Offshore geotechnical problems involving an object penetrating in clay is commonly considered under undrained condition. It is known that the Tresca constitutive model can be modified to include rate-dependent and strain-softening (RDSS) soil strength. Currently many researches adopt the RDSS in total stress analysis and do not compute the excess pore-pressure generated during penetration. This study demonstrates a successful integration of an incompressible effective stress analysis (IESA) to simulate excess pore-pressure generation and RDSS in re-meshing and interpolation technique with small-strain (RITSS) framework. Commonly encountered offshore geotechnical problems such as pipeline installation and punch-through of spudcan penetration are employed to demonstrate the robustness of the proposed integration.