Objective Movable jack-up platforms have been widely used in various types of marine engineering in recent years. With the development of engineering construction to the deep and distant sea, more complex marine environmental conditions pose significant challenges to the bearing performance of platform’s spudcan foundation structure. To cope with these challenges, it is necessary to summarize and analyze research methods and results at home and abroad to seek more effective solutions.

Method This paper introduced the common analytical methods and research status of spudcan foundation bearing capacity, and elaborated on the current research status of key design theories such as spudcan penetration analysis, in-situ bearing performance and foundation deformation stability.

Result For the research on spudcan penetration of jack-up platform, centrifuge experiments or large deformation numerical simulation methods are generally employed at present. On the one hand, numerical simulation method can simulate the spudcan penetration process more efficiently and cost-effectively, but the accuracy still needs to be improved. The study on the in-situ bearing performance of spudcan foundation mainly focuses on the analysis of the damage envelope of the bearing capacity under ideal geological conditions, and fails to fully consider the influence of other complex geological conditions. The study on the deformation stability of the spudcan foundation is scarce, and the short-term environmental load of the platform is mainly based on the experience of other projects, while the study on the long-term load mainly focuses on the settlement deformation of the spudcan foundation and the influence of the consolidation effect of the soil on the vertical bearing capacity of the foundation. The study on the stiffness of the jack-up platform relies on the theoretical model and simplified assumptions, ignoring the complex marine environment and structural nonlinear effects, resulting in insufficient model accuracy, and the research mostly focuses on the overall stiffness of the platform, ignoring the influence of local stiffness.

Conclusion At present, there are still many problems in the key technology research of spudcan foundation of movable jack-up platforms. For spudcan penetration, the simulation accuracy and efficiency can be improved by optimizing the model parameters; for the in-situ bearing performance of the spudcan foundation, more variables of the geological conditions should be introduced into the study, and at the same time, more suitable loading methods and composite limit bearing capacity definition methods should be sought to scientifically and accurately assess the overall bearing capacity of the spudcan foundation. For the study of spudcan deformation stability, research should strengthen the investigation of nonlinear stiffness, using stiffness simplifications and soil models that closely resemble actual working conditions to comprehensively evaluate the stiffness characteristics of the platform.