A multi-piled oil pier is planned to be built in Bohai Sea. For such piled foundation structures in cold seas, ice loads on the piles are often considered as the dominant loads in design. A series of model tests were performed to evaluate the ice loads on the structure and the pile-group effect. Considering the ice conditions of the study sea area, in total, 6 tests were performed and the ice forces on each pile were measured under different test conditions. The test results and discussions are presented in this paper.
With the rapid development of marine transporting and oil exploring activities, large number of oil wharfs have been built up on the shorelines of cold region seas in recent decades. For example, from 2005 to 2015 more than 10 large ports with big oil or gas wharfs were built along the shorelines of Bohai Sea, which is the northernmost sea of China. To achieve large water depth for giant oil transporting vessels, the oil loading terminal needs to be designed to extend to deep water area through multi-piled oil pier. This kind of structure consists of a series of piles and its upper structure (Fig. 1). Furthermore, these structures usually have incorporated batter piles to resist lateral loading, such as ship impact or environmental loads (i.e. wind load, wave load, seismic load or ice load).
Ice loads on the piles are often considered as the dominant loads in design when such structures are located in cold seas. Mainly two types of models for estimating the ice load on single pile have been developed, i.e. analytical models and semi-empirical models. Various aspects of ice actions on multi-piled structures were prior investigated analytically and experimentally (Kato, 1983; Toyama, 1994). These experimental or theoretic studies have given some insightful investigations on the ice loads on multi-piled structures. It has been proven by many researchers that the key in determining ice loads on multi-piled structure is the evaluation of pile-group effect by which the ice load on single pile is reduced.
