The software produces two vertical safety factors. One is corresponding to the minimum horizontal safety factor at wave angle “Theta” and the other one is the independently minimum vertical safety factor.
The lateral soil resistance includes a passive component, which is solely dependent on the pipe embedment.
In scenarios where lift force momentarily gets larger than the Submerged weight, the vertical safety factor < 1 and the pipe might lose contact with seabed, however, the embedment related component of the passive soil can remain nonzero.
In this case, if the minimum horizontal safety factor is >1, it is due to the passive soil resistance due to embedment.
- If the lift force happened to lift the pipe off the ground, then the flow will pass underneath the pipe and regime changes suddenly and the pipe will drop back on the seabed.
Note: It is noted that the Level 2 is not a time domain solution and uses wave spectral properties.