Effect of perforations on the bearing capacity of shallow foundation on clay

As a kind of shallow foundation, mudmat serves as the seabed support structure for subsea wells, pipeline manifolds and pipeline terminations. The shallow foundations are usually designed with perforations to facilitate installation and removal, but the influence of these perforations has not been fully understood. This paper presents a method to analyze the bearing capacities of both 2D and 3D perforated shallow foundations using finite element analysis. The soil was idealized as a Tresca material, with the undrained strength increasing linearly with depth. The outcome indicates that perforation has non-negligible effects on the bearing capacity of shallow foundation. The bearing capacity decreases with increasing perforation ratio R, and the degree of reduction increases with the increase of the dimensionless ratio kB/Suo. For 2D shallow foundation, there exist a critical perforation ratio R, when the perforation ratio is lower than the critical perforation ratio, the perforated foundation do not loss the bearing capacity. For 3D shallow foundation, the bearing capacity decreases immediately with the increase of perforation ratio R.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author