Suction Piles in Clay: Reliability Assessment of Deepwaters

This paper presents an illustrative example of the reliability assessment of suction piles foundation in clayey soils for deepwater applications. The results of two reliability approaches, using suction piles as the foundation system for tension leg platforms (TLPs) under deep waters environmental conditions in the Campeche Bay (Mexico), are compared. The first approach uses the first-order second moment (FORM) reliability method with a suction pile analytical model and the second one uses the Monte Carlo reliability method with a suction pile Finite Element model. The uncertainties of the loads, soils mechanical properties and analytical models were included in the reliability analysis. The results from this study point to important topics for future works.