Fast strength assessment of mitre gates to ship impact

Abstract

The present paper is concerned with the design of lock mitre gates submitted to ship impacts. A simplified analytical method is presented to evaluate the resistance of such structures under collision. The basic idea is to assume that the resistance is first provided through a local deforming mode, corresponding to a localised crushing of some impacted structural elements. For consecutive larger deformations, the resistance is then mostly provided through a global deforming mode corresponding to an overall movement of the entire gate. The developments are validated by comparing results obtained numerically to those predicted by the developed analytical approach for mitre gates.

Keywords:

• mitre gates
• ship collision
• crashworthiness
• super-elements
• pre-design calculations