Push-over response of a jack-up on sand of different relative densities

Abstract

On location offshore, jack-up structures are subject to environmental loading from wind, waves and current in addition to self-weight. Over the operational period of the jack-up, the environmental loading on a given site may not be unidirectional along the jack-up's 'axis of symmetry' but may act from different directions and/or be non-collinear (i.e. wind acting from a different direction than waves and current), resulting in complex load paths at the spudcan footings. This paper discusses load paths obtained from experiments on a scaled model jack-up for two different horizontal loading directions and illustrate the implications of spudcan load paths for the overall response of a jack-up t..