GEOTECHNICAL DESIGN OF VERTICALLY LOADED HYBRID SUCTION-GRAVITY ANCHORS

The Sapinhod and Lula North-East fields, 300km offshore Rio de Janeiro, Brazil are the two pilot fields of the Pre-salt development strategy. Field architecture consists of satellite wells connected to a spread moored FPSO in each of the fields. Through a design competition Petrobras and Partners selected the de-coupled riser system developed by Subsea 7. In each field two BSRs (Buoy Supporting Risers) anchored at 250m below waterline support the rigid risers on one side and flexible flowlines running to the FPSO on the other. Each BSR displaces close to 10,000t of water and provides a nominal net up thrust of 3,250t. This Paper highlights the engineering challenges and the solution developed for the large-scale foundation anchors that support these massive BSRs in the harsh environment of the Santos Basin in 2140m water depth. Vertically below each corner of the BSR tank an 8m diameter by 18m penetration suction anchor houses the receptacles for the pair of tethers. Tension in the tethers was tuned to optimise the system stiffness (to minimise lateral BSR excursion orbits and avoid clash of risers and FPSO mooring lines) while requiring minimum anchor capacity. Four ballast modules of 150t each sit on top of each suction anchor to provide the remainder of the required uplift resistance. Soil conditions across both fields consist of soft silty clay. A geotechnical FE model of the suction anchor in Abaqus was used to evaluate the interaction of the structure, surrounding soil and trapped water beneath the top cap. The model was used to develop the complete load-displacement curves of the system during the undrained design current events. A consolidation FE model using the Soft Soil model in PLAXIS showed that the hybrid anchor/ballast system under sustained uplift loading is stable throughout the design life for the level of sustained design load. Although the LRFD verification format of suction anchors and gravity anchors are well covered in the design codes, there seems to be a gap in the coverage of this particular type of hybrid anchor. The governing condition was found to be the long term drained pull-out capacity under sustained loading with the assumption of slowly leaking suction port and air evacuation port at the top.