Since early 1970’s skirt suction foundations (skirted foundation / bucket foundation) have been used as support for large fixed substructures or anchors for floating structures in offshore hydrocarbon development projects. In recent years skirt suction foundations are recognized as one of the solutions in foundations applicable to bridge substructures installed in waters, because skirt foundations have a wide variety of functions such as control of settlement during service life, less impact to environments during operation at installation site.
This paper introduces general features of skirt suction foundations, and then discusses design practice of them for the application to bridge substructures, with reference to experiments in both laboratory and field.
Author: Takashi Saito, Public Works Research Group, Japan, Yoichi Yoshida, Masato Itoh & Naoki Masui, Obayashi Co Ltd., Japan
Publisher: DFI