Numerical simulation reveals distinct interactions between seabed scour and liquefaction under combined waves and currents, suggesting hydrodynamic conditions dictate pile foundation stability.
The stability of pile foundation and the surrounding seabed is a key research topic in marine engineering, which is mainly affected by two types of failure mechanisms, namely scour and liquefaction. In this study, a new three-dimensional OpenFOAM model for simulating the coupled scour and liquefaction process around the pile is developed while considering the modified coefficient (R) in the Shields number. Based on the sediment transport conditions, two cases are included in this study, bed-load only case and bedload-suspended load case. In the bed-load only case, the impact of two different hydrodynamic loadings (Wave-only cases and wave/current cases) on the seabed response are investigated. Parametric study illustrates that scour and liquefaction do not always co-occur in all cases, and their sequence of occurrence varies with different hydrodynamic conditions. Besides, the effect of seepage-displacement induced velocity uf and the current direction on the seabed response are explored in the bedload-suspended load case. The results demonstrate that the consideration of uf stimulates the development of scour, but delays the expansion of liquefaction depth. Meanwhile, the current direction has a significant impact on the scour hole pattern and the soil concentration.
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Lin et al. (2026) studied this question.
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