Characterizing Inclined Loading Capacity of a Pile embedded in Methane-Hydrate-Bearing Marine Sediments

Methane hydrate (MH) in voids of marine sediments largely alters the mechanical properties of the host sediments. A bond contact model for such sediments was implemented into the distinct element code to simulate the behavior of a pile embedded in MH rich sea floor under a pullout inclined load. The preliminary results demonstrate that the presence of the hydrates affects the load carrying capacity of the pile, which increases with the increase of the hydrate saturation. The hydrate bonds affect more on the pile capacity of lateral loads than that of uplifting loads. The progressive failure of soils due to pile displacements is accompanied by a growing number of broken bonds. The breakage of bonds initiates adjacent to the upper end of the pile, and grows forming a failure wedge of soils.