Dynamic response of an offshore pile to pseudo-Stoneley waves along the interface between a poroelastic seabed and seawater

A coupled model is developed to investigate the dynamic interaction between an offshore pile, a porous seabed and seawater when subjected to the pseudo-Stoneley wave along the seabed and the seawater interface. The pile and the seabed are treated as the porous medium governed by Biot's theory, while the seawater is considered as an acoustic medium and is described by the conventional Helmholtz equation. The free field solution of the incident pseudo-Stoneley wave is obtained using Biot's theory and the potential method. Based on the boundary element method (BEM) for the porous medium and the acoustic medium, three BEM formulations are constructed for the pile, the seabed and the seawater, respectively, which are combined together using the continuity conditions between the pile, the seabed and the seawater to formulate the coupled model for the system. As shown in numerical examples, when the system is subjected to the pseudo-Stoneley wave, the maximum pore pressure of the seabed usually occurs at the region near the interfaces between the seabed and the seawater.