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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/M000397/1
Title: Seabed ploughing: modelling for infrastructure installation
Principal Investigator: Augarde, Professor C
Other Investigators:
Coombs, Professor WM
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Cathie Associates Lloyds Register Group Saipem limited
Soil Machine Dynamics UK
Department: Engineering
Organisation: Durham, University of
Scheme: Standard Research
Starts: 30 November 2014 Ends: 31 March 2018 Value (£): 290,009
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Civil Engineering Materials Ground Engineering
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Construction Energy
Related Grants:
EP/M000362/1
Panel History:
Panel DatePanel NameOutcome
29 Apr 2014 Engineering Prioritisation Panel Meeting 29 April 2014 Announced
Summary on Grant Application Form
Soil ploughing, an activity carried out by man for thousands of years for agriculture, is now used at a much larger scale on the seabed to connect offshore energy production and generation devices to the supply network. In the next 50 years many more of these offshore devices (wind, wave, current and oil & gas) will be installed, meaning that considerably more seabed ploughing will be undertaken. However, we do not possess the same level of understanding of the mechanical and hydraulic processes associated with soil ploughing as we have developed for other soil-structure interaction problems. This means that ploughing schemes and equipment have to be designed on the basis of semi-empirical and conservative approaches, leading to financial uncertainty. In this project, new computational methods will be applied to the simulation of seabed ploughing to provide better estimates of key parameters such as the towing force and speed of ploughing in a given seabed deposit along with insights into plough stability. Given the likely ploughing activity in the next 20-50 years in UK waters and elsewhere, we expect that this new predictive approach will result in major savings for industry.
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