An experimental investigation on the nonlinear hydroelastic response of a pontoon-type floating bridge under regular wave action

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we describe a model test to investigate the hydrodynamic response of a newly designed pontoon-type floating bridge under regular waves. The displacement of each module, the bending moment along the entire floating bridge and the mooring force were obtained. Obvious nonlinear hydroelastic effects can be found by analysing the bending moments for different wave heights, which might result from such factors as nonlinear connectors, nonlinear mooring or nonlinear hydrostatic restoring force. This finding indicates that nonlinear factors have a significant effect on bending moment and should be taken into account in the design of floating bridges.

KEYWORDS:

• Floating bridge
• model test
• nonlinear hydroelasticity
• bending moment

Acknowledgments

We thank LetPub (www.letpub.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.