RESEARCH ON MECHANISM OF JACK-UP DRILLING PLATFORM SPUDCAN PENETRATING INTO SATURATED SAND

In order to study the bearing characteristics of spudcan and the deformation mechanism of sand around the spudcan when the spudcan penetrated into saturated sand, model tests of bearing capacity of spudcan as well as transparent soil experiments of spudcan-soil interaction were carried out. The load-settlement curves of spudcan, displacement vector field and contour map of sand around the spudcan were obtained. According to the cavity expansion theory and segmental displacement iterative algorithm, the load-settlement curves of spudcan under static load was also derived, the error of which was about 11.7% compared with the test results. The theoretical displacement of soil around the spudcan was calculated using the shallow strain path method (SSPM). Compared with the test results, it is found that the calculation error was between 16.7% and 26.3%.