Soil characterisation of South Pars field, Persian Gulf Available to Purchase

South Pars, located in the Persian Gulf, southwest of Iran, is one of the largest offshore gas fields in the world. During the past decade, numerous geotechnical investigations have been carried out in this area for designing deep foundations of offshore oil- and gas-extraction facilities. Generally, such geotechnical site investigations consist of various in situ and laboratory tests. Downhole piezocone penetration tests are widely performed in this area up to a depth of about 130 m below the seabed. Shear strengths of different soil layers are evaluated using various in situ and laboratory methods including unconsolidated undrained triaxial, pocket penetrometer, torvane, and miniature vane tests. In this paper, local geotechnical site characterisation of the South Pars field is presented based on a large amount of data collected from developed phases of the field. This research is particularly focused on the cone factor, which relates the undrained shear strength of soil to the cone tip resistance of the cone penetration test (CPT). The variation of the cone factor within the South Pars field is presented based on CPT results. The deformation characteristics and the stress history parameters have also been evaluated for marine clays of the field. The influence of stress state on cone factors has been studied as well.