Abstract: In the petrochemical industry, heavy crawler cranes are often used for lifting of large equipment. In order to meet the requirements of the foundation bearing capacity for the crane, the soil replaced cushion is often employed to treat the ground and then steel tie plates are laid on the cushion underneath the crane. The composition of that soil and foundation system and consequently its bearing characteristics, are obviously different from that of buildings. Combined with a practical project of hoisting foundation treatment, the bearing characteristics of that kind of foundation system were studied through numerical simulations. Firstly, through the calculation and field measurement analysis under the actual hoisting loads, the deformation and load transfer characteristics of that kind of foundation system under the working loads were revealed, and the feasibility of the proposed elastoplastic finite element model was verified. Then, the safety factor for the bearing capacity of that foundation system was studied through finite element calculations. Comparing with the simplified checking results by Technical Code for Ground Treatment of Buildings(JGJ 79-2012), it showed that the checking calculation of that kind of foundation by the code was too conservative. It was also discussed whether the tie plates under the crane were connected, whether just one raw of the steel tie plates could be taken for the bearing capacity calculation, whether it could be calculated by a two-dimensional model. All of the above research results could provide reference to the development of simplified checking methods.