Objectives Aiming at the problem of structure recovery difficulty caused by soil adsorption force in the process of submarine structure recovery, the model test method of submarine structure sitting bottom adsorption force is proposed.

Methods By designing a series of marine structure base models, building a simple model test device to simulate the process of structure bottom lifting, and adopting a special loading device to quantitatively measure the adsorption force of bottom lifting, we investigated the influence of parameters such as soil type, time of bottom lifting, mass of bottom lifting, area of bottom lifting, and material of base lifting, etc. on the adsorption force of bottom lifting of the structures.

Results The test results show that the adsorption force is positively correlated with the sitting time and sitting weight, and negatively correlated with the sitting area; the adsorption force of sandy and simulated soils is about 50% and 80% of that of the sea-tested soils; the smoother the base material is, the smaller the adsorption force is.

Conclusions The research in this paper can improve the design efficiency of submarine structures in China.