J. Shanghai Jiaotong Univ. (Sci.

), 2015, 20(6): 721-728

DOI: 10.1007/s12204-015-1682-z

Load Distribution on the Hull-Leg Connection

Components of a Jack-Up
ZHENG Yi-kan (), ZHANG Shi-lian (),

LAI Lei ( )

(School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai 200240, China)

Shanghai Jiaotong University and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015

Abstract: The jacking pinions and rack chocks of the xation system of a jack-up sustain tremendous load in the
elevated condition, especially when there exists a remarkable non-uniformity of the load distribution. Failures of
these structural components may lead to disastrous consequence of the jack-up. Despite the importance of these
components, it is dicult to give an accurate prediction of the load distribution on these components in engineering
application due to the complex nonlinear interaction mechanism, which is inuenced by the relative stiness of
the components, leg-guide clearance and backlash. Previous studies mainly focus on the global performance of the
jack-up and pay little attention to the load distribution on the pinions and chocks. The strength of the jacking
system is often guaranteed by the manufacturer for an estimate load level, which brings in uncertainty to the
safety of the jack-up. The characteristics of the hull-leg interaction are discussed in this paper, and a simplied
method using gap elements is proposed. The nonlinear structural analyses are carried out for a specic jack-up
using the proposed method and the three-dimensional nite element method (FEM) with contact algorithm. The
proposed method is proved accurate and eective for the engineering application. The characteristics of the load
distribution of the specic jack-up are discussed, and the conclusions are presented.
Key words: jacking pinions, rack chocks, load distribution, hull-leg interaction, nonlinear structural analysis
CLC number: P 751
Document code: A

0 Introduction
In recent decades, jack-up rigs and analogous structures such as wind turbine installation vessel are widely
used in the oil exploration, production and other oshore engineering. This type of structures consists of
one hull and three or four legs. The legs, either tubular
or lattice structures, are connected to the hull through
the guide structures, the jacking system and in some
cases the xation system[1] . The jacking pinions and
the rack chocks are the most highly loaded components
of a jack-up platform[1-3] . Failures of these structural
components may lead to disastrous consequence of the
jack-up. Statistics show that 75% of the damaged rigs
are jack-ups since 1955, half of which happen during
transport and jacking[4] . Moreover, high load on the
pinions due to the non-uniformity of the load distribution will in turn cause local strength problem of the leg.
As a result, the accurate prediction of the load distribution on the pinions and chocks is crucial to the safety
of the jack-up. However, the real load distribution is
determined by a complex hull-leg interaction mechanism, which is inuenced by the relative stiness of the
Received date: 2014-01-14
E-mail: zykorzht@sjtu.edu.cn

components, the leg-guide clearance and the backlash.

Some researchers have put their eort in the analysis
of the environmental load calculation and structural
response of the jack-up. Spidse and Karunakaran[2]
comprehensively discussed dierent sources of the nonlinear behavior of the platform and outlined how those
eects may be modeled in the numerical simulation.
A two-dimensional nite element program using reasonably sophisticated non-linear models for all of the
major features was proposed by Williams et al.[5] , and
the parametric study of the dynamic response of an oshore jack-up was conducted[6] . Tan et al.[7] proposed
an innovative method to investigate the structural behaviour of a jack-up during installation. Nevertheless,
these studies mainly focused on the global performance
of the jack-up and paid little attention to the load distribution on the pinions and chocks. The strength of the
jacking system is often guaranteed by the manufacturer
for an estimate load level, which brings uncertainty to
the safety of the jack-up.
In this paper, the characteristics of the hull-leg interaction are discussed, and a simplied method using gap
elements is proposed. The nonlinear structural analyses are carried out for a specic jack-up using the proposed method and the three-dimensional nite element
method (FEM) with contact algorithm. The proposed

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method is proved accurate and eective for the engineering application. The characteristics of the load distribution of the specic jack-up are discussed.

1 Characteristics of the Hull-Leg Interaction

The connection structures, as shown in Fig. 1, consist of the upper and lower guides, the jacking system
and the xation system (if mounted). Some jacking
systems use rack-pinions and electric motors and the
others use pins and hydraulic cylinders, as shown in
Figs. 2 and 3[8-9] . The xation system, invented by
F&G in the 1980s, is a piece of equipment with racks
mounted rigidly on the hull, as shown in Fig. 4. The

Fig. 1

Hull-leg connection structures

Secondary pinion
and gear box
Rack post

Inward

Opposing
forces

Storm lock system

Gear box and

electric motor

Bull
gear
Pinion

Inward

Fig. 4

Fixation system

racks are engaged (grip the chord racks rmly) when

a relative motion between the leg and the hull is not
required[1,10]. The purpose of the xation system is to
transfer the bending moment between the leg and the
hull by vertical tension and compression forces on the
opposite leg chords and to keep the topside stable in
operation.
The weights of the hull and leg bending moments at
the lower guide are sustained by these connection components. The conventional understanding of the hullleg interaction is illustrated in Fig. 5[1,3] , where Fh , Fv
and M are the horizontal force, the vertical force and
the moment at the lower guide, respectively.  The
upper and lower guides will transfer horizontal forces
between the leg and the hull.  The jacking pinions
and the rack chocks of the xation system can sustain the vertical and corresponding horizontal forces.
In consequence, the moment is resisted partly by the
couple of the horizontal forces at the upper and lower
guides. The rest is resisted by the vertical force couple formed on the jacking pinions and the rack chocks.
The ratio of the bending moment reacted by the vertical
forces to the total moment is indicated by a parameter
, which is normally in a range of 0.8 to 1.0 for a jackup with the xation system[1] . However, this thought
is just a kind of qualitative analysis. In practice, the

Upper guide
Fig. 2

Rack-pinions jacking system

Lower guide
M

Fh
Fv

Fig. 3

Hydraulic jacking system

Fig. 5

Representative leg-hull connection

J. Shanghai Jiaotong Univ. (Sci.), 2015, 20(6): 721-728

accurate value of is hard to be estimated, not to mention the nonuniform load distribution on each pinion
and chock.
The load distribution on these components primarily depends on the relative stiness of the connection
structures. Apart from that, the following factors also
have eect on the load distribution.  Contact will
be delayed if leg-guide clearance exists, as shown in
Fig. 6, and the horizontal force at the guide will be decreased. In general, large clearance means large value
of .  Pinions and rack chocks interact with leg racks
by means of contact. The tooth pressure angle results
in the proportional vertical and horizontal forces on the
teeth. This feature implies that the jacking system and
the xation system may have signicant contribution
to the horizontal force couple.  For the same reason
of the pressure angle, the rack/pinion arrangement has
a large impact on the shear force between the guides[1] .
As shown in Fig. 7, unopposed pinions will induce high
shear force on the chord, while opposed pinions eliminate this eect.  Backlash will arise after loaded.
The surfaces that come into contact and the direction
of the interaction force are determined by it. Figure
8 gives an illustration of the backlash eect. ApparGap=0

Fig. 6

Leg-guide clearance

Unopposed pinion rack

Opposed pinion rack

Fig. 7

Unopposed rack and opposed rack

723

Backlash

Fig. 8

Eect of backlash

ently, all these eects mentioned must be taken into

consideration to give an accurate prediction of the load
distribution.

2 Nonlinear Numerical Method

From the above discussion, nonlinear numerical
method is the best choice to evaluate the load distribution on the pinions and the chocks. Since the dimension of the pinions and the rack chocks is much smaller
than the leg and the jacking house, it is not practical to
simulate the whole hull-leg connection part with a detailed three-dimensional model for the computational
cost and the convergence problem. Some researchers
have conducted studies on the stress of the rack and the
pinions, but merely a couple of pinions are modeled[11] .
Dierent assumptions and simplication are introduced in research and application. The simplest and
widely applied method treats the hull-leg connection
as a linear spring or even a rigid connection[2,5-6] , as
shown in Fig. 9, where h is the distance between the
vertical springs, k is the stiness of the vertical spring,
Fleg is the vertical force of the leg and kj is the stiness
of the equivalent rotational spring. Apparently, this
method is unable to give the load distribution at all and
only applicable in the global analysis. Some researchers
deal with each of the components as a connection element to achieve more realistic results[1,3,7] , as shown in
Fig. 10. A number of discrete restraint springs or the
gap elements are included to reect the guide clearance
and contact. The jacking pinions and the rack chocks
are represented by the linear springs with the vertical
and horizontal stiness or beams. All the connection
elements are horizontally arranged. This method can
capture some eects of the hull-leg interaction, and the
computational cost is much lower than the contact algorithms. However, from the result of the analysis in
Section 3, the behavior of the pinions and the chocks
may deviate from the real situation signicantly. Therefore, this method doesnt fully reect the components
interaction. In addition, the backlash eect is not included either. Hereinafter, this method is referred to as
Method A.

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In this paper, an improvement is made on Method

A to take into account all the interaction eects mentioned above. The interaction behavior between each
pair of the contact surfaces is simulated as a gap element, rather than the pinions and the chocks themselves. Figure 11 gives an illustration of the xation
system. The pinions and the leg chocks are dealt with
in the same way. In the gure, Tooth 1 (indicated by
the circled number) is possible to contact with Tooth

2 and Tooth 3. These two interactions are modeled by

Element 1 and Element 2. Meanwhile, the tooth itself is
modeled with a rigid element to reect the eccentricity.
The inclined gap elements are arranged normal to the
tooth surfaces with their midpoints through the pitch
line. The behavior of the gap element depends on the
axial load-displacement curve, as shown in Fig. 12. It
is suggested that the shear stiness of the tooth is used
as the axial stiness.

h
Upper guide

Jacking pinions

kj

Rack chocks

Fleg
Fig. 9

Fleg

Lower guide

The single spring method

Fig. 10

Typical leg-to-hull connection detailed model

Fixation system

Rigid element
Element 1

Rack
teeth

1
3

Fig. 11

Element 2

The contact states of the rack and xation system and the inclined gap elements

Load/GN

0
3
6
9
12
1.0
Fig. 12

0.5
0
0.5
Displacement/m

1.0

Load-displacement curve of the rack chocks

In this way, the contact and separation phenomena

are simulated. Only the compression force will arise
on the tooth surface, and the force is always normal
to the tooth surface. Four basic states of a tooth can

be represented, as shown in Fig. 11.  No contact

exists.  The top surface of Tooth 1 comes into contact with Tooth 2, and the bottom surface is separated
from Tooth 3.  The state is opposite to the second.  The top and bottom surfaces of Tooth 1 are
both in contact; in this state, the resultant vertical and
horizontal forces on a pinion are not proportional, depending on the relative stiness of the whole system.
Moreover, the load-displacement curve could be modied to count in the initial clearance and the damping
coecient could be also added in if a dynamic analysis is required. The guide-leg contact is simulated using a number of discrete horizontal gap elements as in
Method A. Hereinafter, this method is referred to as
Method B.
In spite of the computational cost, a threedimensional FEM model using contact algorithm is also
established for comparison in this paper. The contact

J. Shanghai Jiaotong Univ. (Sci.), 2015, 20(6): 721-728

725

algorithm in FEM is substantially solving a constrained

minimization problem with the no penetration constraint. The numerical method of the contact algorithm
includes detecting the motion of the nodes on the contact surfaces, judging the contact status, applying the
constraints to avoid penetration between the contact
surfaces, and applying the appropriate boundary conditions to simulate the frictional behavior and the heat
transfer[12] . Several methods have been developed to
impose the constraint conditions, such as augmented
Lagrangian methods, penalty methods, and direct constraints. In this paper, most of the unconcern regions,
such as leg, jack house and leg well are simplied using
the shell and beam elements. The pinions, the chocks,
the guide structures and part of the leg are modeled using the solid element and set as the deformable contact
bodies. The symmetric-penetration, double-sided contact option is chosen to minimize the penetration between the contact surfaces, and the friction is neglected.
Hereinafter, this method is referred to as Method C.

3 Numerical Analysis and Discussion

The nonlinear analyses are carried out for the connection structures of a specic jack-up which consists of
the xation system, the opposed jacking pinions, part
of the tubular leg and the leg well structures. Three
models are established according to the method described in Section 2, indicated respectively as Model
A, Model B and Model C. The leg and the jack house
are included in each model with the shell and beam
elements. The leg well structures are also included to
eliminate the boundary eect. The nodes on the border
of the leg well are simply supported. Three FEM models have similar appearance, as shown in Fig. 13. The
only distinction of these models is the treatment of the
connection components. The rack chocks of Model A
and Model B are shown in Fig. 14. The pinions are
dealt with in the same way. In Model C, the pinions,
the chocks, the guide structures and part of the leg are
modeled using the solid element and set as the contact
bodies, as shown in Fig. 15. The clearance is 10 mm
at the lower guide and 0 mm at the upper guide as the
wedge blocks are arranged.
The axial load-displacement of the rack chock is
shown in Fig. 12, in which a positive value means
stretching. The stiness in this gure is 12.3 GN/m
in compression and zero when stretched. The compression stiness comes from the result of FEM analysis
of a single-tooth under the uniform load, as shown in
Fig. 16. The displacement at the intersection of the
pitch line and the tooth surface, i.e., the midpoint of
the gap element, is used in the calculation. The displacement has the components of shear and bending.
The bending component is removed by

Fig. 13

The FEM model diagram

Model A
Mode

z
y

x
Mode
Model B

z
y

Fig. 14

The rack chocks of Models A and B

Leg shell

Racks and
chocks
Fig. 15

Wedge blocks

The contact bodies in Model C

Intersection
point

y
z
Fig. 16

Pitch line

The FEM model of the rack tooth

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Fy
,
k1 =
uy ux tan

(1)

where, k1 is the axial stiness; Fy is the total vertical

force acting on the tooth surface; uy and ux are the
vertical and horizontal displacements of the intersection
point, respectively; is the pressure angle which equals
30 here.
Table 1

Other stiness values are employed for comparison

to investigate the inuence of the tooth stiness, e.g.,
k2 = 0.5k1 , k3 = 0.8k1 , k4 = 2k1 , and k5 = 5k1 . The
calculation results of Model B using these stiness values in the load case C-2-3 (see below for detailed description) are tabulated in Table 1, where the gures in
parentheses are the relative errors (absolute value) of
the load to the results of Model C.

Load results of Model B with dierent chock stiness values of the load case C-2-3
Max vertical load/MN

Horizontal force/MN

Max von Mises stress

Chock stiness
On the pinions

On the chocks

At the upper guide

At the lower guide

of the leg/MPa

k1

1.4 (0)

6.8 (2%)

2.4 (1%)

0.072

341 (4%)

k2 = 0.5k1

1.6 (8%)

6.0 (14%)

2.6 (6%)

0.075

326 (8%)

k3 = 0.8k1

1.5 (3%)

6.6 (6%)

2.5 (2%)

0.070

337 (5%)

k4 = 2k1

1.4 (4%)

7.4 (6%)

2.4 (2%)

0.070

349 (1%)

k5 = 5k1

1.4 (6%)

7.9 (13%)

2.3 (4%)

0.069

354 (0)

It can be seen that the tooth stiness inuences the

load distribution to a certain extent. However, compared with the variation of the stiness, the change of
the load distribution is not signicant. The reason is
that the chocks and the pinions are metal blocks and
their stiness is much larger than the transverse stiness of the jack house. As a consequence, the latter
plays a bigger role than the former, which will be discussed below. The results in Table 1 also show that
Eq. (1) is adequate to be used in the engineering application, and a slightly larger value normally will not
bring an obvious error. This is a reason why constant
value is used for the compression stiness. Another
reason is that the structure is elastic for safety. In the
following analysis, the stiness of the chocks and the
pinions is determined by Eq. (1). The stiness of the
wedges at the upper guide and the wear-resistant pad
at the lower guide are calculated directly according to
their dimension.
Two load cases are considered in the analysis: vertical load and combined load. The vertical load is the
preloading force and equals 40 MN. The combined load
is represented with six load components at the lower
guide and derives from the global analysis of the jackup, as shown in Table 2. In this table, F means the
force, M means the moment, and the subscripts x, y
and z are the longitudinal, transverse and vertical directions, respectively. The load is applied in the center
of the legs lower end through a multi-point constraint
(MPC). Three subcases, i.e., xation system engaged
alone, jacking system engaged alone and both of them
engaged, are considered. The designation C-i-j is used
to indicate them, in which i is the load case index and
j is the subcase index. The indexes vary according to
the order mentioned above, starting from 1.

Table 2

Maximum combined load in all conditions

F /MN

M/(MN m)

37.7

41.3

The results of the load case C-2-3 are tabulated in

Table 3, where the gures in parentheses are the absolute errors of Model A and Model B relative to Model
C, respectively. It can be observed that each item of the
results of Model B is very close to that of Model C. By
contrast, Model A has a substantial error. Therefore,
Method B has adequate accuracy for the engineering
application. It can be also seen that the force at the
lower guide can almost be ignored due to the clearance.
However, the force at the upper guide is quite substantial for Model B and Model C, because the pinions and
the chocks near the bottom of the jack house will form
a force couple with the upper guide instead of the lower
guide. This illustrates that for this type of leg and arrangement, even though the xation system is engaged,
the upper guide still resists a considerable part of the
bending moment.
The load distribution of Models A and B is shown
in Fig. 17. It can be seen that the force on the pinions
and the chocks is perpendicular to the contact surface in
Model B, which conforms to the actual situations. By
contrast, Model A gives a poor prediction of the force
direction. Despite that, the maximum load in Model A
is signicantly underestimated.
It can be also seen that the load magnitude distribution in Model B has a dumbbell shape, i.e., higher
in both ends and lower in the middle. The maximal
force presents at the lowest chock. That is because

J. Shanghai Jiaotong Univ. (Sci.), 2015, 20(6): 721-728

727

the vertical force is always accompanied by the proportional horizontal force due to the pressure angle. As
a consequence, the horizontal stiness of the structure
plays an important part in determining the magnitude
of the contact force. This mechanism can be seen more
clearly in the load case C-1-1, as shown in Fig. 18. In
this case, the load distribution is vertically symmetric,
Table 3

and the same dumbbell-shaped load distribution is observed. The deformation conguration of the jack house
(Fig. 19) shows that the top and the bottom are more
rigid than the middle part, resulting in higher loading
in the ends than in the middle. The eect of the horizontal stiness also implies that the pinions and the
chocks also contribute to the horizontal force to couple

Results under the combined load for the jacking system and the xation system engaged
Max vertical load/MN

Horizontal force/MN

Max von Mises stress

Model

of the leg/MPa

On the pinions

On the chocks

At the upper guide

At the lower guide

1.89 (32.2%)

5.95 (14.8%)

0.685 (71.8%)

0.075 2 (N.A.)

341 (3.7%)

1.43 (0)

6.84 (2.0%)

2.440 (0.5%)

0.072 0 (N.A.)

341 (3.7%)

1.43

6.98

2.43

354

0.871

1.19

0.868

1.26

0.888

1.39

0.929

1.64

0.937

1.89

1.73
1.55
1.45
1.46

1.94
1.68
5.15
5.95

5.95
5.61
5.27
4.93
4.60
4.26
3.92
3.58
3.24
2.90
2.56
2.22
1.88
1.55
1.21
0.868

1.45

1.65

1.37

1.27

1.34

0.869

1.51

0.922

1.06

1.26

3.18
4.17
2.08
2.65

(a) Model A
Fig. 17

Fig. 18

1.61

1.61

1.38

1.38

1.15

1.15

1.27

1.27

1.52

1.52

3.19
4.51
3.00
5.48

3.19
4.51
3.00
5.48

2.94
4.77
3.74
7.90

7.90
7.37
6.85
6.32
5.79
5.27
4.74
4.21
3.69
3.16
2.63
2.11
1.58
1.05
0.527

(b) Model B

Load distribution-combined load (MN)

5.48
5.11
4.75
4.38
4.02
3.65
3.29
2.92
2.56
2.19
1.83
1.46
1.10
0.730
0.365

Load distribution-vertical load of Model B (MN)

Fig. 19

Deformation graph-vertical load of Model B

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the guide structures will increase signicantly; on the

contrary, the local stress in the leg is relative low due
to the low horizontal force.  The relative low force
on the chocks in the load case C-2-3 suggests that the
jacking system can share some load from the xation
system. In spite of this, a large part of the moment is
resisted by the xation system.

with the upper guide. Therefore, even the opposed pinions may produce a large local horizontal force acting
on the leg.
The results of other load cases of Model B are summarized in Table 4.  When the xation system is
engaged, the lower guide basically has no eect. 
When only the jacking system is engaged, the force at
Table 4

Summary of the load results of Model B under the combined load

Max vertical

Sum of the

load/MN

vertical load/MN

Load case

Horizontal force/MN

Max von Mises

stress of the

On the

On the

On the

On the

At the

At the

pinions

chocks

pinions

Chocks

upper guide

lower guide

leg/MPa

Jacking system engaged (C-2-1)

5.38

37.7

3.54

1.640 0

261

Fixation system engaged (C-2-2)

8.45

37.7

2.67

0.072 3

420

1.43

6.84

11.5

25.9

2.44

0.072 0

341

Both engaged (C-2-3)

4 Conclusion
(1) The proposed method using the gap elements is
accurate and eective to evaluate the load distribution
on the pinions and the racks.
(2) The tooth stiness can be eectively evaluated
using FEM and Eq. (1).
(3) The horizontal stiness of the jack house has a
great inuence on the load distribution. As a consequence, the pinions and the chocks also contribute to
the horizontal force couple. The load distribution is
dumbbell-shaped, and the maximal load presents at the
lowest chock.
(4) Even the opposed pinions may produce a high
local horizontal force for the leg. The local strength
problem of the leg may arise from that.
(5) The jacking system can share some load from the
xation system when both engaged. The xation system shares a larger portion of the load.

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