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The world-class research and industry collaboration being used to help pave the way for Australia's largest resource projects was in the spotlight in Perth in early November.

The Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems at the University of Western Australia staged an international symposium - The International Symposium Frontiers in Offshore Geotechnics - to highlight latest developments in the field.

The event attracted some of the world's leading experts in offshore geotechnics and shed light on the innovative engineering techniques used in numerous oil and gas developments in Western Australian such as the $43 billion Gorgon Project off the State's North West coast.

The Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems (COFS) is part of UWA's Oceans Institute (insert link), and is an international leader in offshore geotechnical engineering research. COFS is home to around 40 staff and world-leading experimental facilities.

Building Australia's offshore oil and gas facilities presents unique challenges for geotechnical engineers, who assess seabed conditions and determine how best to support or anchor offshore structures and how to safely route pipelines.

The Gorgon Project , for instance, will be Australia's largest single resources project. The project's offshore gas wells will be built some 1300 metres under water and will be entirely sub-sea.

The pipeline carrying gas to back to Barrow Island to be processed will have to negotiate the steep terrain at the margins of the continental shelf. The calcareous sediments that form the seabed off Australia's coast are rarely found in other regions of oil and gas development. Calcareous sediments have uniquely challenging engineering properties - such as a tendency to weaken and liquefy when disturbed - which prevent many conventional engineering design practices from being utilised offshore Australia.

"The designers of the Gorgon pipelines utilised some of the latest research techniques, many of which have been developed at UWA, to predict the behaviour of the pipelines through the life of the project," said Professor David White , of the Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems. Professor White's keynote lecture at the symposium focused on the geotechnical engineering of sub-sea pipelines.

The Chair of the ISFOG symposium, Professor Susan Gourvenec , said the symposium had attracted expert speakers from around the world.

"We are very pleased to have attracted key industry figures from Houston, London and Norway to speak at our event, and we are also proud of the state-of-the-art contributions coming from our own group at UWA and the local geotechnical industry in Perth," she said.

Professor Mark Cassidy , the Director of COFS, said the Centre played a key role in providing research to support the State's resources sector.

"COFS is one of WA's research success stories, hosting world-leading experimental facilities and engaging closely with local industry to support the resource developments, such as Gorgon, that underpin the West Australian economy," he said.

The genesis of COFS was the support provided by UWA for the significant foundation remediation works needed for some of the early offshore platforms constructed on the North West Shelf, when designers first faced the challenges associated with the unique seabed conditions in this region. COFS is now involved in all of the major projects currently under development in WA, having performed studies to support the Pluto, Wheatstone, Browse, Ichthys, Sunrise and Scarborough projects.

But the Centre's expertise extends much further. Since it was established in 1997, COFS has worked on major industry projects in virtually every corner of the world. These include the Euripides piles (UK), Tai Po LNG pipeline (Asia), Gwang Yang bridge (South Korea), Hong Kong LNG pipeline (Hong Kong), BP's Angolan fields (Africa) and the Maari platform (New Zealand), to name a few.

Much of the Centre's key research involves the use of centrifuge modelling to test how geotechnical structures and seabed sediments respond. Full scale testing of offshore structures is impractical and expensive, so UWA's centrifuge technology is used to provide accurate simulations of geotechnical behaviour at small scale in a safe and efficient experimental environment. UWA is recognised as a global leader in geotechnical centrifuge modelling technology, and is currently hosting researchers from the US, Europe and China who are visiting Perth to use the centrifuge facilities.

COFS is the only place in the southern hemisphere to have both a beam and drum centrifuge and also has the added benefit of having its own electronics laboratory and workshop to custom design and build equipment as needed.

The Western Australian Government supports the Centre as a designated State Centre of Excellence and COFS is also supported by The Australian Research Council and The Lloyds Register Educational Trust *

*The Lloyd's Register Educational Trust (The LRET) is an independent charity working to achieve advances in transportation, science, engineering and technology education, training and research worldwide for the benefit of all. To learn more, please visit: https://www.lr.org/about_us/LRET/ >