The Behavior of a Poroelastic Seabed Under Normal and Shear Loads

Abstract

One of the effects of ice and water forces on large offshore structures which rest on the seabed is to transmit surface tractions to the region of contact. A recent paper by Sabin and Raman-Nair [1] has examined the effect of a normal axisymmetric load P (r , t ) on a poroelastic seabed under several different conditions of boundary permeabilities. That study provided a number of general formulas for an arbitrary normal load. The present paper extends the results found in [1] to include shear tractions. While reference [1] was primarily a theoretical discussion, the present paper examines several specific forms of loading and presents graphs showing the normal stress and pore pressure response for various values of the parameters of interest. These results are compared with the limiting case of an extended period of time.