Contact Analysis Of Hull-Cantilever Interface On Jack-up

Human demand for energy is growing. Exploration and exploitation of offshore oil and gas resources also will be more extensive and in-depth. Among them, the jack-up platform has been the most widely used. The cantilever on the jack-up platform can effectively improve the operating range and capabilities of the platform. Therefore, the t research and design of the connection form of the cantilever on the jack-up platform is of great practical significance and economic value. The contact analysis between the connecting structures of the cantilever and the main deck, could provide specific details of the calculation data to the research and design in order to optimize the connection form of cantilever.When the strength of the cantilever is checked in engineering practice, on the contact surfaces between the connecting structures, the more common practice is to use the beam and bar elements to simplify the simulation of contact behavior, or directly to not consider contact behavior. However, the contact is a very complex nonlinear behavior. And ignoring the effects of the contact will make the calculation results quite different with the real one.In response to the problem, this article describes the principles and methods of the finite element contact analysis. And with an example of a400feet jack-up platform, a study for numerical simulation of the contact behavior of the cantilever and its support structure has been done, using finite element software of ABAQUS6.8.1.First, this article builds the finite element models of the cantilever, the main deck and connected institutions with MSC. Patran2005. And then,"inp" files are generated by the using of the interface of Patran and ABAQUS. After that, this article assembles and modifies the model which is input into ABAQUS with "inp" files, sets the key parameters of the contact analysis, and calculates with the Standard analysis module of ABAQUS. Finally, the calculation results are compared with the results by linear finite element method without considering the effects of the contact. This article analyzes the stress distribution of the cantilever and its supporting structure, the energy dissipation of the whole system as well as the contact surface between the contact force and friction force. Then, this article comes to a conclusion that the nonlinear finite element method for the contact analysis can effectively simulate the contact position of stress, deformation, and system energy dissipation, and is able to provide more accurate and detailed study and design calculations.