Mahdi Rasoulzadeh - MSc, Sahand University of Technology;
AhmadReza Mostafa Gharabaghi - Associate professor, Sahand University of Technology;
MohammadReza Chenaghlou - Associate Professor, Sahand University of Technology;

Failure in self-elevated jack-up units may happen during jacking operation under sever sea state conditions or may happen due to punch trough during the jacking operation. During installation and pre-loading procedure of jack-up units, the potential of unexpected punch through failure exists. This occurs when the spudcan pushes a locally strong zone of soil into underlying softer material which leads to rapid downward movement of related leg and consequently leading to the buckling or collapse of other legs. Therefore, the investigation of punch through in jack-up units during jacking operation is important. During jacking operation, the connection of legs to the hull is provided through the pinion which is different from the fixed form, so the proper modeling of its behavior is essential. In this paper, the punch through behavior of a typical jack-up unit during jacking operation is modeled by finite element software under different conditions. The results are compared and most critical conditions and their related critical points are investigated

jack-up rig, Punch through, Jacking operation, nonlinear static analysis