Optimal Shear Key Interval for Offshore Shallow Foundations

Embedment of offshore shallow foundations is typically achieved by ‘skirts’, i.e. thin vertical plates that protrude from the underside of a foundation top plate and penetrate the seabed confining a soil plug. Skirted shallow foundations are often idealized as a solid, rigid element for geotechnical analysis of the foundation, on the assumption that sufficient skirts, or ‘shear keys’ will be provided to ensure that the deformable soil plug displaces as a rigid body. Should too few shear keys be provided, failure mechanisms involving deformation within the soil plug may occur, leading to a reduction in load-carrying capacity. There is currently no formal guidance regarding the optimal spacing of shear keys to ensure rigid body displacement of the soil plug. The absence of guidance may lead to unconservative designs if the number of shear keys is under estimated to save on fabrication or to conservative designs if additional shear keys are provided to minimize the risk associated with the uncertainty. Either case is undesirable and clear benefit is to be gained from a better understanding of shear key spacing. This paper presents guidance on the minimum number of shear keys required to achieve optimal capacity of square and rectangular skirted foundations (i.e. equivalent to that of a solid rigid foundation) under undrained generalized six degree-of-freedom loading in soft soils with linearly increasing shear strength with depth.