Woodside’s North West Shelf Pile Foundations and North Rankin B Installation
Dr Ting Zhang
Woodside Energy Ltd is Australia’s largest independent dedicated oil and gas company. It operates five piled platforms on the North West Shelf Australia: North Rankin A (1984), Goodwyn A (1995), Angel (2008), Pluto (2010) and North Rankin B (2012). All these platforms have piled foundations penetrating carbonate soils but there are particularities on the foundations for each asset. This presentation will describe:
- The state of the art design of the piled foundation for the North Rankin B platform (based upon the lessons learned from the North Rankin A and Goodwyn A pile installations)
- The successful installation of the piled foundation for the North Rankin B platform in 2011
Speaker biography
Dr Ting Zhang has been involved in geotechnical engineering projects since graduating from UNESCO‐IHE for Water Education and GeoDelft (Deltares), the Netherlands in 2003. Dr Zhang has been involved in a wide variety of engineering projects onshore, near shore and offshore covering site investigation, geotechnical field and lab testing, ground improvement, centrifuge modelling, numerical analysis, offshore installation and project management.
Before joining Woodside Energy Ltd as a Geotechnical Engineer in 2010, Ting was a lead civil engineer on Rio Tinto Iron Ore Expansion Project and senior geotechnical engineer with Sinclair Knight Merz, Perth, Australia. He had also worked in Hohai University for 10 years before relocating to Australia in 2007.
Dr Zhang has been awarded bachelor degree in civil engineering and master and PhD degrees in geotechnical engineering. He is a committee member of the WA Chapter of the Australian Geomechanics Society and committee member of technical committee TC103 (Numerical Methods) of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE). He has authored and co‐authored about 20 technical papers on ground improvement, centrifuge modelling and pile foundations.
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