In this paper, the undrained vertical bearing capacity of subsea pipelines installed on a surficial high shear strength crust overlying a soft clay is studied. A large deformation finite element methodology which incorporates frequent remeshing and mapping of all state variables from an old geometry to a new geometry was adopted for the current work. Various relative shear strength ratios of crust to underlying soil and pipe diameters were considered for the parametric study. It was observed from the results that, the presence of crustal layer significantly influences the vertical penetration response of pipelines.
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