Abstract: The bucket foundation is a new kind of the marine structures which are suitable for application to soft soil. For its reliability, extensive experimental investigations have been conducted on its capacity, stability and hydrodynamic characteristics during service life, but less attention is paid to its behaviors during construction. A model scaled 1∶8 is fabricated and experimented in the laboratory. The internal force, deformation and airtightness under specified positive and negative pressures were investigated, and the relationships between strain and loading duration of each monitoring point were recorded. Elastic finite element analyses were carried out by using a commercial software ABAQUS and the results were compared with those obtained from the indoor experiments. The research results show that the model behaved well during the experiment and the strain of concrete and steel bar approximately varied in parallel with the loading process. The results of the elastic finite element analysis agree well with the results of the indoor experiments.