Investigation of offshore landslides impact on bucket foundations using a coupled SPH–FEM method

Abstract

Abstract Background As the exploitation of marine resources intensifies, the impact of submarine landslides on underwater structures has become a significant issue. Existing research primarily focuses on the impact on pipelines, often neglecting the actual deformation and mechanical response of underwater structures under impact loads in numerical simulations, thus complicating the evaluation of the reliability of these engineering structures in extreme conditions. Moreover, the dynamic response of bucket foundations, a common form of underwater base, under the effect of submarine landslide impacts remains unclear. Methods To address this knowledge gap, we have developed a fluid-structure coupling system that employs the coupled Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH)-Finite Element Method (FEM) to investigate a single impact process and analyze the displacement response of bucket foundations within a water-offshore landslide-bucket foundationsubgrade context. The accuracy of this developed method has been systematically verified through comparisons with previous experimental and numerical results. Results During a submarine landslide impact event, the impact force demonstrates a distinct decrease followed by stabilization, and the displacement response of the bucket foundation exhibits a rebound effect after reaching its maximum value. Furthermore, we conducted an extensive analysis of different impact angles for underwater data centers equipped with multi-bucket foundations. Our study revealed that group-bucket foundations experience a combined translation-turnover failure when subjected to submarine landslide impacts, and the most unfavorable scenario for such impact is identified. The research introduces a novel numerical simulation approach for investigating the impact of submarine landslides on complex underwater structures.