Engineering with Computers (2003) 19: 152159

DOI 10.1007/s00366-003-0254-2

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

X. M. Tan J. Li C. Lu Q. H. Cheng

Numerical analysis of jacking operations for a self-elevated jack-up unit

Received: 28 January 2002 / Accepted: 19 December

Springer-Verlag London Limited 2003

Abstract Localized failure and collapse of a jack-up

unit may take place during installation on site, especially
under severe sea state conditions. To minimize the loss,
structural behavior is predicted before construction. When
the hull of a unit is elevated from sea water level, the
structure system varies with time. This means that normal
structural analysis is difficult to satisfy the relevant
requirements. To capture the system status at different
times, an innovative method is proposed and incorporated
into Finite Element Analysis (FEA). With a full model of
a jack-up unit having been built and with the techniques
developed, behavior such as Rack phase difference (RPD),
vertical reaction forces of the pinions and footing reactions, etc., under different loads and boundary conditions
can be determined by FEA in the time domain. These
valuable data would be helpful in re-designing the unit,
and also provide guidance for site installation. To determine the general characteristics of a jack-up unit, case
studies on a practical design have been done, with some
important findings concluded.
Keywords Contact algorithm FE analysis Jack-up
unit Leg fixity Non-linear analysis Rack phase
difference

Introduction
A standard tool for drilling operations in the oil and gas
industry in shallow water (less than 100 meters), jack-up
units have been used for several decades. Normally, a
jack-up structure consists of a hull and three K-lattice legs
resting on spudcan footings. Each leg has three chords. A
general view of a typical three-legged jack-up unit is

X. M. Tang (), J. Li, C. Lu, Q. H. Cheng

Institute of High Performance Computing, 1 Science Park Road,
#0101 The Capricorn, Singapore Science Park II, Singapore
117528
E-mail: tanxm@ihpc.a-star.edu.sg

shown in Fig. 1. When the structure is towed on site and

positioned with its footings reaching the sea bed, the hull
is raised up a few meters above the water surface and
preloaded with seawater pumped into the hull. Once the
desirable penetration (i.e. 310 m) has been achieved to
make the whole system stable, the hull will then be jacked
up through pinions acting on the racks of the chords.
During the conceptual design of a jack-up unit, full
attention should be given to the four particular design conditions; transit, installation, elevated states and retrieval
[1]. Researchers have put considerable effort into the
analysis and measurement of the transit and the elevated
states. Non-linear dynamic behavior under various wave
and current loading conditions has been studied by
Spidse and Karunakaran [2] on an integrated leg-hull
system. Based on a two-dimensional non-linear finite
element model, the dynamic response of an offshore jackup unit due to environmental loads has been investigated
by Williams et al. [3] with a parametric study. Karunakaran et al. [4] and Springett et al. [5] have performed a lot
of analysis on the full-scale measurements obtained from
the instrumented jack-up platforms. The characteristics of
a jack-up platform operating at two different locations in
the North Sea were investigated by Leira and Karunakaran
[6], with the effects from uncertainty in load and boundary
conditions being deduced. A lot of important findings
have been obtained from these research works. Nevertheless, very little work has been done on the important
installation phase, i.e. the units jacking operations.
In general, a group of pinions (two or four) may rest
on each chord. Each pinion is controlled by one motor.
The average position of each group at any time can be
detected. The Rack Phase Difference (RPD), defined as
the displacement difference between the average position
of each group and that of the lowest group of the same
leg, is normally used to measure the inclination of the leg
towards the hull during jacking. Experience has shown
that a high RPD may cause structural damage to the legs.
If the RPDs of one or more legs are too high, adjustments
should be performed to avoid localized failure. To predict
the important system behavior such as RPDs, finite
element simulations with control techniques should be
carried out.

153

and in the SNAME report [10], the legs may even be sliding if the foundation is not stiff enough. Therefore, the
effect of fixity on the behavior of a jack-up unit are investigated in this paper, and conclusions, which can be used
as jacking guidance, have been drawn according to the
simulation results.

Basic data and assumptions for the FE model

To study the performance of a jack-up unit during the
jacking phase, a full three-dimensional finite element
model is built based on a practical design. Pipe and beam
elements are used for the K-lattice legs. Since the stiffness
of the hull is very large compared to that of the jack-cases
and legs, a simplification has to be made. The hull, which
is assumed to be always above the water level, is modelled
by beam elements with consideration for both stiffness
distribution and mass distribution according to the design.
The total mass of the hull is about 14,000 tonnes. The leg
extension measured from the sea bed to the hull level at
the beginning of the simulation is approximately 47 m.
The overall view of the legs together with the hull is displayed in Fig. 2.
There are four pinions on each chord, Each motivated
by one motor. The motor speed varies with the torsion on
the pinion. A motor can be represented by a transfer function of moving-up speed versus vertical force on the
pinion. The vertical force and the moving up speed can
be expressed as follows:

Fig. 1 General view of a typical three-legged jack-up unit

To protect the structure from damage during jacking,

guides (upper, middle and lower guides) are installed for
each chord. Usually, the clearances between guides and
chords are very small. For a typical problem, guide-toleg contact may occur, which introduces certain clamping
moments, resulting in several failure occurrences. A nodeto-surface contact algorithm is to be derived and used in
the analysis.
The characteristics of a jack-up system during jacking
vary with the load and boundary conditions. Wind load
is one of the factors that seriously affects the system.
Horizontal forces with various magnitudes acting on the
hull are considered as wind load in simulations. Except
for the wind load condition, another important factor is
the fixity of the footings. The sea-bed fixity has been analyzed and discussed by Springett et al. [5] and Temperton
et al. [7], based on the instrumentation data measured on
site. The fixity of the legs should be somewhere between
the pinned and fixed connection. According to the
research done by Hoyle and Snell [8], Langen et al. [9]

Fpinion =

2TmotorRgearboxgearboxbearing
Dpinion

(1)

Vpinion =

DpinionSmotor
60Rgearboxgearbox

(2)

where Dpinion is the nominated diameter of a pinion,

Tmotor is the torsion generated by the motor, Rgearbox is the
gearbox ratio, gearbox is the gearbox efficiency, bearing is
the bearing efficiency, and Smotor is the motor speed (in
rpm).
As a result, the relation between the vertical force and
the moving-up speed of a pinion is shown in Fig. 3.
Except for the start-up stage, the speed during jacking is
in the range of 0.00540.0082 m/s.
Sometimes, wind speed is extremely high on the site.
Horizontal force induced by wind is assumed to act on
the hull in the direction of port/starboard leg to forward
leg, as shown in Fig. 4. The maximum value of the wind
load is estimated up to 2200 kN when the wind velocity
reaches 55 m/s. Since the projected area of the leg members normal to the wind direction is much smaller than
the faade area of the hull, the wind load and
wave/current load on the legs are quite small, as compared
to the wind load on the hull. Thus, environmental loads
on the legs are neglected.
Interaction between the legs and foundation has a lot
of uncertainties. However, shallow penetration of the
spud-cans into the seabed normally generates a certain

154

Fig. 4 Top view of the jack-up unit

Fig. 2 FE model of the jack-up unit

Fig. 5 Simplification of the pinions and guides attached on the jack-case

Fig. 3 Relation between vertical force and moving up velocity of a

pinion

fixity. The leg ends are thereby assumed as pinned (fixity

= 0) and fixed (fixity = 1.0) in the simulations to cover
all possible behavior. If the foundation for a leg is very
weak and penetration depth is reduced due to scouring,
the leg can even be assumed as sliding (a roller on the
seabed).

In addition, the jacking procedure is carried out very

slowly at a steady state. The hull is jacked up about 13
m in half an hour. Hence, the dynamic effect is ignored
during these simulations.

Simplification of interaction between hull and legs

Connections between pinions and chords
In practice, the hull climbs up with the pinions rotating
along the zigzag racks on the chords of legs. The pinions

155

are incorporated into the gearboxes, which are installed

on the jack-cases being fixed on the hull. The jack-cases
are represented by beam elements. To model all the
pinions and racks with their real shapes in the model
would make the model very complicated, causing the
simulations to be very time-consuming. Similar difficulties also exist for the interaction between legs and guides.
Therefore, further simplification is made to strike a balance between efficiency and accuracy of the simulations.
Nodes on the jack-cases, which are connected with the
pinions, are termed pinion nodes. The pinions are simplified as special elements, namely pinion elements. A pinion
element includes both stiffness in the vertical direction
and horizontal stiffness in the direction of the pinion node
to leg node, which are the same as the shear stiffness
Ks and the axial stiffness Ka of the real pinion, respectively. The chords in the jacking regions are meshed finely.
Pinion elements are created between the pinion nodes and
all the nodes of the corresponding chord within the jacking region. A control function fc(y) is applied for each
pinion element, where y is the elevation of the pinion
node. The interaction between pinion and chord is
described by vertical force FV and horizontal force FH:
FV = fc(y)Ks

(3)

FH = fc(y)Ka

(4)

in which
fc(y) =

Fig. 6 Location of contact point when ns lies above master segment

lp = ni[t r(c, c) 0

(6)

where ni = ni(c, c) is normal to the master segment si

at the contact point.
If slave node ns has penetrated though the master segment, an interface force vector fs will be added to the
degrees of freedom corresponding to ns:
fs = lpkini

if lp 0

(7)

and forces

if (ynodeFpinion ynodeFleg) ymin

1 if (ynodeFpinion ynodeFleg) = ymin

fim = i(c, c)fs

(5)

where ymin is the minimum difference of the vertical distance calculated among all the pinion elements on each
chord before the solution of each time step. Thus, only
one pinion element is active for each pinion at each time
step. In other words, the hull is always connected with
the chords of the legs through 36 active pinion elements.

Contact algorithm for guides

Sliding and impact along interfaces will occur when the
legs touch the guides. The penalty method, which consists
of placing normal interface springs between all penetrating nodes and the contact surface, is used. The interface
stiffness is chosen to be approximately the same order of
magnitude as the stiffness of the interface element normal
to the element. At each time step, each slave node is
checked for penetration through the master surface. If the
slave node does not penetrate, nothing is done. If it does
penetrate, an interface force is applied between the slave
node and its contact point. The magnitude of this force is
proportional to the amount of penetration. This may be
thought of as the addition of an interface spring.
As shown in Fig. 6, t is a position vector drawn to slave
node ns with the master surface si being identified with
ns. Penetration of the slave node ns through the master
segment, which contains its contact point, is indicated if

if lp 0

(8)

will be added to the nodes (i = 1, 2, 3, 4) that comprise

master segment si. The stiffness factor ki for master segment si is given in terms of the bulk modulus Ki, the volume Vi, and the face area Ai of the element that contains
si as
ki =

fsiKiA2i
Vi

(9)

where fsi is a scale factor for the interface stiffness which

is normally defaulted to 0.1.
Shell elements, which are representing guides being
attached on the jack-cases, are generated as master surfaces for the slave nodes on the chords to contact. The
clearances are set to be 5mm, 13mm and 38mm for upper
guides, middle guides and lower guides, respectively.

Simulation procedure and verification

Simulation procedure
Simulation procedures are described as follows. First, the
whole model is pre-stressed with the self-weight of the
structure and horizontal forces, if they exist. Thereafter,
the hull is jacked up step by step. The time step is determined automatically by the software. For each step, vertical
reaction forces Fv between the pinions and chords are
taken out to calculate the corresponding velocities of the
pinion nodes according to the load-speed curve. The dis-

156

each chord of the forward leg from simulation and the

site-measured data are displayed in the same plot, which
proves the accuracy of the proposed simulation method.
Practical phenomena from simulation

Fig. 7 Comparison of RPDs between simulation results and site measured

data

placements of the pinion nodes are then obtained. Thereafter, the hull is jacked up with displacement control on
the pinion nodes. With the corresponding active pinion
elements being found out, the structure is analyzed, taking
the chord-guide interaction into consideration. The duration of jacking in the simulation is approximately 1800
seconds when the hull reaches its final elevation.
Verification of simulation with experimental data
To verify the simulation method, available experimental
data from the site are compared with the curves from
simulation. The simulated jack-up unit was installed under
a very calm sea-state. RPD values were measured by
devices on site, while pinion reaction forces were detected
by instrumentation. Simulation of jacking operations without wind load is performed on the jack-up unit with three
legs pinned. The RPD history curves of the forward leg
from the simulation are compared with the measured data
points, as shown in Fig. 7. It can be seen that those experimental points are very close to the simulated curves. Vertical pinion reaction forces are also compared. As illustrated in Fig. 8, the total reaction forces of the pinions on

Fig. 8 Comparison of vertical pinion reaction forces between simulation

results and site measured data

To explain the simulation results in a simple and clear

way, there are some terms to be defined. Due to horizontal
loads, large vertical forces and bending moments could
be generated in the legs. The bending moment is resisted
by the hull either through couples of horizontal forces
going through the leg guides, or through couples of vertical forces going through the pinions. The systems under
these two conditions are normally termed a floating jacking system and fix jacking system, respectively.
Simulation for the jack-up unit with three legs pinned
under 2200 kN horizontal wind load is taken as an
example to illustrate the physical phenomena. Typically,
the behavior of the forward leg is presented. Similar
phenomena can be found for the port leg and the starboard
leg. In the beginning (i.e. 0750 s), the RPD increases
rapidly, as shown in Fig. 9. During this period, the vertical
reaction force of the pinions on chord 1 increases, and the
reaction forces of the pinions on chords 2 and 3 decrease
until they are very close together, as can be seen in Fig.
10. That is, the percentage of the bending moment resisted
by the vertical reaction force of the pinions reduces from
100% (a 100% fix system at the beginning of the
simulation) to nearly 7% (a 93% floating system at a time
of about 750 s). At a time of 750 s, some gaps have been
closed to improve the horizontal resistance. From 750
1300 s, the vertical reaction forces of chord 1 and chords
2 & 3 only have small variations, which means that the
system has more or less remained a floating system. More
gaps are closed gradually, and shear forces are induced
to act on the leg in the contact region. From 13001800 s,
the difference in the vertical reaction forces of the pinions
between chord 1 and chords 2 & 3, the percentage of the
bending moment resisted by the vertical reaction forces,
increases. Consequently, RPD growth speeds up again. If
the RPD limitation or the ultimate bearing capacity of any

Fig. 9 RPDs for forward leg of the jack-up unit under 2200 kN wind
load

157

Fig. 10 Vertical pinion reaction forces for forward leg of the jack-up unit
under 2200 kN wind load

Fig. 11 Horizontal forces of the guides on chord 2 of forward leg of the

jack-up unit under 2200 kN wind load

pinion is reached, jacking correction would be carried out.

Curves shown in Fig. 11 depict the status for gaps along
chord 2 of the forward leg clearly. Curves for gaps along
chord 3 are similar to those along chord 2. From these
curves, it is very easy to check which gap is closed, and
when it starts to take effect.
Reaction forces (RX, RY, and RZ) at the leg ends during jacking are shown in Figs 1214. The force distri-

Fig. 13 Reaction force (RY) on legs of the jack-up structure under 2200
kN wind load

Fig. 14 Reaction force (RZ) on legs of the jack-up unit under 2200 kN
wind load

bution patterns among the three legs are very clear. Since
the model and loads are symmetric along the Z-direction,
RX of the port leg and starboard leg are of the same value
with an opposite direction. After jacking for a certain
time, the absolute values of all legs go down and oscillate
around zero. Bending moments caused by horizontal wind
load and the P- effect of the self-weight are resisted by
vertical reactions RY on the legs. Obviously, RY on the
forward leg is larger than that of either the port leg or the
starboard leg. As for the reaction force in the Z-direction,
the force on the forward leg is larger than other two at
the beginning. The forward leg force goes down along
with time, while the other two go up. The variation is
related to the gap status. Nevertheless, the total RZ of the
three legs is always 2200 kN.

Case study for various practical considerations

Variation of wind load
Fig. 12 Reaction force (RX) on legs of the jack-up unit under 2200 kN
wind load

Under different sea state conditions, the horizontal wind

load changes drastically. Four cases with different wind

158

RPD value is caused by the properties of the structure

itself, such as mass distribution and geometry of the whole
structure. Once wind load is introduced, the RPD value
will increase rapidly in the first stage (0750 s); the larger
the wind load, the higher the RPD. In this stage, the difference of vertical reaction force between chords 1 and 2
increases with wind load. After a certain time, some gaps
are closed gradually. More wind loads are then taken by
the guides. The RPD increment slows down. For a higher
wind load, since more gaps are closed and guide resistances are larger, the slope of the RPD history curve
becomes smaller. Obviously, due to the complicated gap
status, the RPD increment is not in linear relation to the
wind load magnitude.
Fig. 15 RPDs for forward leg of the jack-up unit with three legs pinned

Variation of leg fixity

Fig. 16 Vertical pinion reaction forces for forward leg of the jack-up unit
with three legs pinned

As described in the introduction, the constraints at the

ends of the legs are very difficult to determine, due to
different geology conditions and various spudcan designs.
The legs can be assumed as pinned, fixed or two legs
pinned with starboard leg sliding, as suggested by
SNAME (1994). To study the effect of leg fixity, three
simulations are performed on the jack-up unit under 2200
kN wind load. As illustrated in Figs 17 and 18, comparisons of RPDs of the forward leg and comparisons of
pinion vertical reaction forces on chords of the same leg
have been made.
The jacking behavior varies significantly with leg fixity.
RPDs and pinion vertical reactions of the jack-up unit
with fixed and pinned legs are of the same trends, since
the models are symmetric. With rotational degree of freedom constrained, the RPDs decrease more than 20% as
compared to those with pinned legs. The pinion reaction
differences become smaller as well. It is clear that the
difference in the verification case is due to the fixity of
the legs on site. However, if the starboard leg is released
to slide along the seabed, the structure will not be symmetric any more. The RPDs in fact go up much faster and
higher. Compared to the three pinned legs, the maximum

Fig. 17 RPDs for forward leg of the jack-up unit under 2200 kN wind
load

loads (i.e. 2200 kN, 1100 kN, 550 kN, and 0 kN) have
been simulated for the jack-up unit with three legs pinned.
Comparisons of RPDs of the forward leg and comparisons
of the pinion vertical reaction forces on chords of the same
leg have been carried out, and are shown in Figs 15 and
16, respectively.
If no wind exists, the RPD goes up slowly. This small

Fig. 18 Vertical pinion reaction forces for forward leg of the jack-up unit
under 2200 kN wind load

159

RPD is 80% higher, and the differences of vertical reaction forces among the three chords are much larger.

Conclusions
A numerical simulation method based on finite element
analysis to predict the behavior of a self-elevated jack-up
unit during jacking has been developed. The method has
been verified with experimental data, and very good
agreement has been yielded. This development is of great
industrial importance, as a jack-up unit can now be optimized before onshore construction, and offshore installation
can be done smoothly with the predicted behavior under
various sea states.
Case studies have been performed on a practical design,
and the results have given us a much better understanding
of a jack-up unit under the specified load and boundary
conditions during installation. Thus, an improvement of
the jacking system may be achieved with the help of these
results. Some suggestions are given below:
1. Since a lower wind load generates smaller RPDs, it
would be better to carry out the jacking operations in
a low-class sea state.
2. Due to the fact that the behavior of a jack-up unit with
fixed legs is much better than that with pinned legs,
the spud-can of each leg should penetrate to the seabed
as deeply as possible during pre-loading to achieve
good fixity.
3. Leg sliding should be avoided, if possible.

To achieve good quality of a practical design with low

cost, more simulations should be done on the sensitivity
studies by changing some important parameters, such as
the stiffness of the legs, clearance of the guides and power
of the motors.

References
1 DNVC (1992) Det Norske Veritas Classification. Strength Analysis of
Main Structures of Self-elevating units. Norway
2 Spidse N, Karunakaran D (1996) Nonlinear dynamic behaviour of
jack-up platforms. Marine Struct 9:71100
3 Williams MS, Thompson RSG, Houlsby GT (1999) A parametric study
of the non-linear dynamic behaviour of an offshore jack-up unit. Eng
Struct 21:383394
4 Karunakaran D, Brheim, M, Spidse N (1999) Full-scale measurements from a large deepwater jack-up platform. Marine Struct
12:255275
5 Springett CN, Stonor RWP, Wu X (1996) Results of a jack-up measurement programme in the North Sea and their comparison with the structural analysis. Marine Struct 9:5350
6 Leira BJ, Karunakaran D (1995) Site-dependent reliability of a mobile
jack-up platform. Marine Struct 8:151169
7 Temperton I, Stonor RWP, Springett CN (1999) Measured spudcan fixity: analysis of instrumentation data from three North Sea jack-up units
and correlation to site assessment procedure. Marine Struct 12:277309
8 Hoyle MJR, Snell RO (1999) Jack-up sliding probability in the context
of current cssessment practice. Marine Struct 12:231253
9 Langen HV, Wong PC, Dean ETR (1999) Formulation and validation
of a theoretical model for jack-up foundation load-displacement assessment. Marine Struct 12:215230
10 Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (1994) Site Specific
Assessment of Mobile Jack-up Units, 1st Ed. Technical and Research
Bulletin 55A, NJ