Partrac to Present Paper on Scour Prediction at All Energy (UK)

Dr Kevin Black will present a paper at All Energy, titled “Scour Prediction at Offshore Structures: Utility of the DNV (2011) Guidance and the Way Forward for Scour Prediction”. All Energy takes place 22-23 May 2013 in Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre.

Scour occurs at the seabed due to flow accelerations around the foundations of offshore structures and is an occupational hazard for developers of offshore wind farms. It presents risks to the foundation stability through a lowering of the over-turning moment, it increases the frontal area for wave loading and it can expose vital electrical interconnector cabling. With comparatively few exceptions scour will occur to a greater or lesser extent around all structures placed on the European inner continental shelf.

Scour prediction forms an important part of site development, and the predictive methodology issued in the form of engineering guidance by the DNV authority is routinely and widely used by developers and their consultants to predict scour.

The purpose of this paper is to review the guidance, recently (2011) updated, offered by DNV to examine its utility in relation for use as a scour prediction methodology. The review concludes that the guidance is of limited utility, and applicable under a set of specific environmental-engineering conditions only. There are some recommendations, which have been made towards improving the guidance perhaps in an alternative format (‘Best Practise’). A look into the future of scour prediction considers several emerging acoustic methods as a means of collecting data to inform a more robust approach to scour prediction.

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Press release, May 20, 2013; Image: osil