Development of a model jack-up unit for the study of soil-structure interaction on clay

The behaviour of spudcan footings under combined vertical, moment and horizontal loading is a critical aspect of the site-specific assessment of offshore jack-up platforms. In recent years, experiments on single footings have helped describe the non-linear load-displacement behaviour of spudcans on various soil types, and this behaviour has in turn been encapsulated numerically, typically in the form of semi-empirical models based on strain-hardening plasticity theory. There is cause for concern, however, that the application of these models in predicting the behaviour of a complete jack-up unit with multiple footings has yet to be verified experimentally. To achieve this, and to gain an improved understanding of the overall system behaviour under various loading regimes, a 1:250 scaled model of a representative jack-up unit has been designed, built and calibrated at The University of Western Australia (UWA). The model can be used to perform sophisticated 1-g pushover tests (both monotonic and cyclic) in ...