Mobile drilling units and permanent facilities are anchored to the seafloor using a variety of potentially costly anchoring systems. Petrobras has reported their successful use of torpedo piles, as an economical way of anchoring deepwater facilities. Recently, US operators have shown an increased interest in torpedo piles. As such, the authors have embarked on a multi-phase research program, which started by a thorough review of the literature about torpedo piles and other seafloor penetrator experiments. The results of the Deep-Ocean Model Penetrators tests performed during the 1980's were well documented and provided a unique opportunity to calibrate an embedment prediction model. The results of this successful calibration effort are presented. The next phase of the research effort consists of a series of model torpedo pile experiments performed at The University of Texas at Austin using their large soil bed facilities. The preliminary results of this program are also presented in the paper. Finally, the authors describe the proposed next phase of the research program, which will consist in performing a limited number of offshore field tests using a 0.3-m-diameter, 6-m-long torpedo test pile.
Mobile drilling units and permanent facilities are anchored to the seafloor using a variety of anchoring systems, including driven piles, suction caissons, suction embedded plate anchors (SEPLAs), vertically loaded anchors (VLAs), and drag embedment anchors. Deepwater anchoring systems can be quite costly, and the oil and gas industry is always looking for more cost effective ways to anchor deepwater facilities.
During the last 10 years, Petrobras (Bonfim dos Santos et al., 2004) have reported their successful use of torpedo piles (Fig. 1), as a very economical way of anchoring a number of deepwater facilities in the Campos Basin, offshore Brazil. Recently, some US operators have shown an increased interest in using torpedo piles.
