With the development of the offshore oil and gas industry, mobile jack-up drilling platforms are increasingly required to operate in deeper waters and harsher environments. The improvement of the jack-up site-specific assessment practice is vital for safely meeting this demand. In soft clayey seabeds, the spudcan foundations of the jack-up platform penetrate deeply into the soil, and complete or partial backflow occurs. In recent years, a number of studies have investigated the performance of spudcan foundations in soft clay to improve the relevant recommendations in the industry guideline published by SNAME. In this paper, a brief review of recent research in this area is first provided. Then, a force-resultant model that is suitable for performing integrated soil-structure analysis is proposed. An example of the application of this model is finally provided, and important comparisons with the SNAME model are drawn.
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