PETROLEUM EXPLORATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Volume 42, Issue 2, April 2015

Online English edition of the Chinese language journal

Cite this article as: PETROL. EXPLOR. DEVELOP., 2015, 42(2): 259–264. RESEARCH PAPER

Sliding risk of jack-up platform re-installation close to

existing footprint and its countermeasure
MAO Dongfeng1,2,*, ZHANG Minghui1,2, ZHANG Laibin2, DUAN Menglan1, SONG Linsong3
1. Ocean Oil-Gas Research Center, China University of Petroleum, Beijing 102249, China;
2. SAWS Oil-Gas Safety Engineering Center, Beijing 102249, China; 3. China Oilfield Services Limited, Yanjiao 065201, China

Abstract: Analysis on the sliding risk of jack-up platform re-installation close to the existing footprint is conducted with finite element
method. An effective countermeasure to reduce the sliding risk is suggested and an example analysis for an existed jack-up platform
re-installation in a typical block with two layer soil within design driving depth in China sea area is carried out. Taking into consideration
fluid seepage in pore structure, sliding contact friction, and the material and geometric nonlinear properties, a fluid-solid coupling finite
element model for the spudcan-soil interaction is constructed. By comparing the numerical simulation result with the experimental result
published in the literature, the reliability of the finite element model is verified. With the model, the failure process, the movement pattern
of foundation and the spudcan-soil interaction under the impact of the footprint are analyzed. The study shows: in pitching pile the plastic
failure zone appears at the low corner close to the spudcan first, then the area beneath the spudcan, and the plastic area becomes larger to
form a connecting region finally as the loading increases continuously; the migration pattern of soil around the spudcan changes sharply
with the distance between the spudcan and the footprint increasing; at the same time the peak value of the horizontal sliding force in-
creases first then decreases gradually. In the final pitching pile position, ‘stomping’ in advance in appropriate distance and depth can re-
duce the sliding risk of a jack-up platform re-installation effectively.

Key words: existing footprint; jack-up drilling platform; spudcan-soil interaction; sliding risk; countermeasure

Introduction principle, not allowed. If this is not inevitable, the guidelines

With the increase of operation frequency, the case of in-
stalling jack-up platforms on sites with old footprints is be-
coming more common. Piling on footprints becomes a grow-
ing threat to operational safety of jack-up platforms. The
non-uniform loading caused by footprints could make the
spudcan slide into the old footprint during jacking when
a leg closes to an old footprint. The size of the slide trend is
measured by horizontal force on the spudcan during preload-
ing when only vertical loads are expected. If the slide occurs,
the legs will incline in different directions, causing legs stuck
in platform and raise failure of the platform, posing serious
threat to the safety of the legs and even the whole platform
structure. The sliding trend of spudcan depends on the lateral
sliding force and the torque between leg and ship hull. A third
of spud driving and pulling accidents have something to do
with foundation, and 15% of them is resulted from foot-
prints[1].
According to the related guidelines[2], spudcan re-installing
very close to or partially overlap with existing footprints is, in
recommend the use of a jack-up identical to (with same foot-
ing geometry and leg spacing) at exactly the same position of
the previous unit, where possible. However, it is unlikely that
two jack-up units have an identical design because the struc-
ture of most units is often custom-made, and the installation
of units is subject to the effects of a various factors. It is evi-
dent that the existing guidelines can not ensure the safety in-
stallation of jack-up units in close proximity to existing foot-
prints. Since the footprint issue involves such complex issues
as nonlinear seepage, soil nonlinearity, fluid-solid coupling
and sliding friction contact, numerical solution convergence,
etc, so far only a few related studies have been reported at
home and abroad[3]. Starting back from the 1990s, the study
abroad looked into the interaction between the leg and soil
under the existence of remained stake holes (old footprint) by
building leg-soil interaction models. With the drum centrifuge
model experiment, Stewart et al. investigated the impact of
pile bending rigidity on the spudcan-footprint interaction and
the influence of the distance between the spudcan and the

Received date: 13 Feb. 2014; Revised date: 28 Jan. 2015.

* Corresponding author. E-mail: maodf@cup.edu.cn
Foundation item: Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51379214); China National Science and Technology Major Project
(2011ZX05027-005-001).
Copyright © 2015, Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development, PetroChina. Published by Elsevier BV. All rights reserved.
 MAO Dongfeng et al. / Petroleum Exploration and Development, 2015, 42(2): 259–264
footprint on sliding risk during jack-up workovers[4]. Cassidy
et al. pointed out that the torque on the spudcan in horizontal
direction would increase with the increase of load after con-
ducting a series of drum centrifuge model experiments to si-
mulate the piling process under various advance ballasts[5].
Teh et al. carried out a series of test to investigate the effects
of sloping seabed and footprint on the sliding of a jack-up
platform. They found the horizontal sliding force caused by
footprint is much bigger than that of seabed slope[6]. Jardine R
J et al. simplified a three dimensional model to a plane strain
one to deal with footprint issues first, then studied backfilling
method[7]. They reached the conclusion the analysis with the
plane strain model could yield accurate enough engineering
results but the backfilling was not very effective[7].
In view of the little understanding and limited literatures on
this topic, in this paper, a finite element model of spudcan-soil
interaction during jacking in ABAQUS is presented to analyze
the spudcan-footprint interaction, and by comparing the si-
mulating results with experiment results to validate the finite
element model. Furthermore, a countermeasure was put for-
ward and a case study was carried out.
1. Analysis methods and computing model
To analyze the spudcan-soil interaction under the effect of
past stake hole, the fluid seepage-stress coupling should be
calculated. The total undrained stress analysis is used in this
paper, in which the total stress is the sum of effective stress
and the hydrostatic pressure in consideration of the saturation
degree. The equilibrium equation in vertical direction is:
⎧ dS
d σ ⎪ ρ g − γ W [ S (1 − φ ) − ( zW − z )] z < z0
=⎨ dz (1)
dz ⎪ ρ g z ≥ z
⎩ 0
In computation, the finite element mesh is fixed on soil
skeleton, and fluid could pass through the mesh when satisfy-
ing the fluid continuous equation. The Forchheimer law is
adopted to simulate nonlinear seepage[8]. The soil is consid-
ered as a perfect elastic-plastic material, that means
Mohr-coulomb is the constitutive model[9], and the soil elastic
modulus E is assumed to be nearly proportional to undrained
shear strength Su, with E=500Su. The Mohr-coulomb yield
criterion is as follows:
s + σ m sin ϕ − c cosϕ = 0 (2)
where, s = (σ 1 − σ 3 )/2 σ m = (σ 1 + σ 3 )/2
Choosing the vertical plane containing the line connecting
spudcan and footprint’s center to establish a 2-D finite ele-
ment model as shown in Fig. 1. The stake hole has a diameter
of D and depth of d. In order to decrease the boundary effect,
the soil mass is assumed to be 15D wide and 7d deep. Eight
node plane strain and pore pressure element CPE8PR is taken
for the soil to avoid locking phenomenon and improve the
computational accuracy. The active-passive surface contact
algorithm is adopted to deal with the contact interaction and
the relative displacement between the spudcan and surround-
ing soil, in which the spudcan’s surface is taken as the active
− 260 −
surface and the soil’s surface as the passive surface[10]. The
contact between stake and soil is expressed in the form of
penalty function, in which the tangential contact obeys the
Coulomb friction law, and the normal contact follows the hard
touching mode, i.e., the penetration between spudcan and soil
is forbidden but the separation between them is allowed[6]. In
order to get the accurate curve of the horizontal force and the
vertical displacement, the displacement control method is
used to load. To reduce the calculation convergence difficulty,
the spudcan is simplified, its side friction is ignored because
the side area of the spudcan is much smaller than its bottom
area. The friction coefficient for undrained clay and drained
granular soil is 0.2-0.3 and tan δ respectively, where δ is
friction angle between spudcan and soil.
Since soil is indeformable under the weight stress field, the
initial geo-stress field is taken into account first and stress file
in ‘initial conditions’ is imported rather than ‘Geostatic’ which
is invalid to such complex spudcan-footprint interaction. In
addition, considering the serious soil deformation at large
spudcan penetration depth, ALE (arbitrary Lagrange Euler
method) self- adaptive mesh is employed to avoid huge warp-
ing and ensure the calculation accuracy.
According to the drum centrifuge model test data of Uni-
versity of Western Australia[5, 11−13] , a 2-D model and a 3-D
FE model were built by using the above methods respectively,
the horizontal sliding force on the spudcan at various depths
was simulated by use of the sum of horizontal stress on each
contact element of spudcan (Fig. 2), and compared with the
experimental results (Fig. 3)[5, 11−13], which shows that the
simulating results of the 2-D model and 3-D model, agree
with experimental results very well, confirming the reliability
of the models proposed in this paper. Since the 3-D model has
long computing time and high convergence difficulty, the 2-D
model is used in the paper.
2. Impact of old stake hole on platform sliding
2.1. Failure process of soil mass around spudcan
The failure process of soil around spudcan was analyzed
with the model proposed in the paper. Let the distance be-
tween the spudcan and the center of the old stake hole
L=0.75D (D=6 m, d=6 m). The single layer clay parameters
are: effective density of 860 kg/m3, cohesion of 20 kPa, internal
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of finite element model.
 MAO Dongfeng et al. / Petroleum Exploration and Development, 2015, 42(2): 259–264

Fig. 2. Simulation results.

Fig. 3. The drum centrifuge model test result.
friction angle of 0 º.
The gradual failure process of soil mass around spudcan is
divided into three stages: (1) The plastic damage zone appears
at the bottom edge of footprint first (Fig. 4a). (2) The plastic
damage zone expands at the bottom edge of footprint and
plastic damage zone occurs at the farther side of spudcan with
increasing load (Fig. 4b). (3) The plastic damage area expands
to a continuous sliding surface when soil mass is damaged
completely.
2.2. Effect of the distance between spudcan and stake
hole on soil movement pattern
The soil displacement vector around the spudcan at differ-
ent distances between the spudcan and old stake hole when
the spudcan arrived at the designed depth is shown in Fig. 5. It
can be seen that apophysis tendency is obvious at the bottom
of the stake hole and the soil close to the footprint migrates
toward the stake hole clearly. With the increase of the distance,
the soil under the spudcan basically migrates downward,
while most of the soil close to the spudcan moves into the
stake hole and only a small part moves downward with the
spudcan’s edge.
2.3. Influence of distance between spudcan and stake
hole on horizontal sliding force
The relationship between the horizontal sliding force on the
spudcan and its vertical displacement at different distances
between spudcan and stake hole is shown in Fig. 6. The peak
horizontal sliding force at different distances between spudcan

Fig. 4. Failure process of clay around spudcan in loading.

Fig. 5. Displacement vector of soil at different distances between spudcan and stake hole after piling.
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 MAO Dongfeng et al. / Petroleum Exploration and Development, 2015, 42(2): 259–264
Fig. 6. The horizontal sliding force versus vertical displacement
at different distances between spudcan and old stake hole.
and footprint is listed in Table 1. It can be seen from them that
with the increase of distance, the peak horizontal sliding force
increases continuously until it reaches the maximum value at
the distance of 4 m, then it decreases gradually. In order to
further study the relationship between the distance and the
peak horizontal sliding force, the distance between spudcan
and old stake hole was non-dimensionalized (Table 1).
In the issue with ‘footprint’, the horizontal sliding force on
spudcan is related to soil strength, old stake hole size, diame-
ter of spudcan, and the distance between spudcan and the
stake hole center. In this paper, only the effect of distance
between spudcan and old stake hole center is discussed, based
on the data in Table 1, and considering horizontal sliding force
on spudcan is zero when the distance between spudcan and
old stake hole is zero, Matlab software was used to fit the
relationship between peak horizontal sliding force and the
ratio of center distance to old stake hole diameter, and the
following expression was obtained.
1.3439
⎛L⎞ ⎛ L⎞
H max = 4.1248 ⎜ ⎟ exp ⎜ −1.9555 ⎟ (3)
D
⎝ ⎠ ⎝ D ⎠
The fitting curve of the peak horizontal sliding force and
the distance between spudcan and stake hole is shown in Fig.
7. It can be seen from the figure the peak horizontal sliding
force increases quickly before reaching the maximum value
then gradually decreases. The peak horizontal sliding force
reaches the maximum value when the ratio of the distance
between spudcan and stake hole to the footprint diameter is
about 0.75. In addition, when the ratio is equal to or larger
than 5, the peak horizontal sliding force approaches zero,
which means in this case the influence of old footprint can be
ignored.
3. Countermeasures to footprint
For old footprint issues, this paper suggests the counter-
measure of ‘trial stomping’. ‘Stomping’ scheme involves pre-
loading at suitable offset distance and depth to make some
foundation soil sliding into the old stake hole to decrease ho-
rizontal sliding force before the spudcan is tamped into final
position. For example, taking the most dangerous situation
shown in Fig. 7 as the final position (L=0.75 D), trial stomp-
− 262 −
ing was simulated at offset distance of 1.0 D, 1.25 D, 1.50 D,
1.75 D and 2.0 D respectively. The finite element model was
similar to that in Fig. 2 except for two layers of soil. In typical
block in China sea area, the design penetrating depth is 7 m,
the first layer soil, clay, is 5 m thick with 11 kPa cohesion, the
second layer soil is sand with a internal friction angle of 15°.
The horizontal sliding force acting on spudcan at different
depths during jacking directly without stamping is shown in
Fig. 8. It can be seen when penetrating in the first layer, the
horizontal sliding force is small, but it increases greatly in the
second layer and may cause damage to the leg structure.
The horizontal sliding force at various depths after stomp-
ing in different distances is shown in Fig. 9. It can be seen that
the horizontal sliding force in the second layer significantly
reduces when stomping at offset distance larger than 1.25 D.
In other words, the spudcan can be tamped into design depth
safely after stamping under this condition.
The horizontal sliding force at final design position after
stomping at different offset distances is shown in Fig. 10.
Since the maximum horizontal sliding force at depth 7 m
when stamping at 1.25 D is the smallest, the optimal stamping
offset distance is suggested to be 1.25 D.
Taking the bearing capacity curve (Fig. 11) and the hori-
zontal sliding force curve during piling after stomping at dif-
ferent depths (Fig. 12) into comprehensive consideration, the
stamping depth is recommended to be 7 m.
4. Conclusions
In order to control the sliding risk for a jack up platform
re-installation close to an exist footprint, a finite element
model was built and its reliability has been verified by test
result. The analysis with the FE model proposed in this paper
shows: (1) Under the impact of the old stake hole, during the
initial loading stage, the soil plastic damage zone appears at
the bottom of the footprint and the part beneath the farther
side of spudcan, then plastic damage zone expands continu-
ously with increasing load and finally forms a continuous
sliding surface. (2) The soil movement pattern on the side
close to and below the spudcan change greatly with the in-
crease of distance between spudcan and old stake hole. (3)
With the increase of distance between spudcan and footprint,
the peak horizontal sliding force increases first, and then
Table 1. Peak horizontal sliding force on spudcan at different
distances between spudcan and old stake hole.
L/m L/D Peak horizontal sliding force (MN)
1 0.166 0.264
2 0.333 0.497
3 0.498 0.593
4 0.664 0.698
5 0.834 0.653
6 1.000 0.561
7 1.166 0.504
8 1.333 0.443
9 1.498 0.383
10 1.664 0.326
 MAO Dongfeng et al. / Petroleum Exploration and Development, 2015, 42(2): 259–264

Fig. 7. Fitted curve of peak horizontal sliding force and ‘L’.

Fig. 11. Bearing capacity curves at 1.25 D stomping.

Fig. 8. Horizontal sliding force at different depths without

stomping.
Fig. 12. Horizontal sliding force during piling after stomping at
different depths.

Before piling at final position, stamping at a suitable offset

distance (>1.25 D) and depth can greatly reduce the platform
sliding risk and ensure the jack-up operation safety.

Nomenclature

σ z —vertical effective stress, Pa;

z—relative altitude, m;
ρ—effective soil density, kg/m3;
g—gravitational acceleration, 9.8 m/s2;
Fig. 9. Horizontal sliding force at different depths when stomp- γw—liquid gravity density, kg/m3;
ing at different distances.
S—saturation, %;
φ — porosity, %;
z0—altitude of interface between dry soil and partially saturated
soil, m;
zw—free water surface attitude, m;
σ1—the maximum principal stress, MPa;
σ3—the minimum principal stress, MPa;
ϕ—internal friction angle, (°);
c—cohesive force, Pa;
D—footprint diameter, m;
d—footprint depth, m;
L—the distance between spudcan and footprint center, m;
δ —spudcan-soil friction angle, (°);
Fig. 10. Horizontal sliding force at final position after stomping
at different offset distance. Hmax—peak horizontal force, MN.

decreases gradually until approaching zero, in this case, the References

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