Long-Term Lateral Cyclic Response of Suction Caisson Foundations

Suction caissons have been used increasingly by the offshore industry throughout the world to anchor floating production systems, offshore wind turbines, oil and gas industry and anchorage elements. Suction caissons as the foundation of marine structures are usually exposed to the lateral cyclic forces of wind, waves and the impact of ships. Recent studies have considered the response of suction caissons to such loading in single-layer soil, but have generally been limited to a few thousand cycles, whereas offshore structures will generally experience millions of loading cycles over their service life. seabed soils can also contain different layers. In this article, after reviewing the results of research on lateral loading of suction caissons with a limited number of cycles, the results of recent studies with a very large number of loading cycles and about 1 million cycles are presented. Also, the long-term behavior of suction caissons to lateral cyclic loading in single-layer and layered seabed are reviewed. based on the summary of the results of existing studies, it seems that lateral cyclic loading can even in some cases increase the caisson capacity by up to 30% and stiffness by up to 50%. This change in stiffness must be taken into account in changing the natural frequency of the system or investigating the possible occurrence of the resonance phenomenon.