No abstract

The stability of seafloor sediments constitutes an important consideration in planning and design of various offshore facilities. The stresses induced either by waves during a storm or by shaking during an earthquake may cause shear failure in ocean floor sediments leading to landslides. In this paper, the basic elements of analysis for submarine landslides are presented. The loadings associated with both wave action and earthquakes are treated as random processes and some of the soil parameters are also considered to be random variables. The analyses for different modes of seafloor instability are formulated in a stochastic framework, which provides the basis for the evaluation of risk of submarine landslides in a given offshore region. Numerical results of some example analyses are also presented.