Abstract
Given the documented wave-induced damage of elevated coastal decks during extreme natural hazards (e.g., hurricanes) in the last two decades, it is of utmost significance to decipher the wave-structure-interaction of complex deck geometries and quantify the associated loads. Therefore, this study focuses on the assessment of solitary wave impact on open-girder decks that allow the air to escape from the sides. To this end, an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) numerical method with a multi-phase compressible formulation is used for the development of three-dimensional hydrodynamic models, which are validated against a large-scale experimental dataset of a coastal deck. Using the validated model as a baseline, a parametric investigation of different deck geometries with a varying number of girders Ng and three different widths, was conducted. The results reveal that the Ng of a superstructure has a complex role and that for small wave heights the horizontal and uplift forces increase with the Ng, while for large waves the opposite happens. If the Ng is small the wave particles accelerate after the initial impact on the offshore girder leading to a more violent slamming on the onshore part of the deck and larger pressures and forces, however, if Ng is large then unsynchronized eddies are formed in each chamber, which dissipate energy and apply out-of-phase pressures that result in multiple but weaker impacts on the deck. The decomposition of the total loads into slamming and quasi-static components, reveals surprisingly consistent trends for all the simulated waves, which facilitates the development of predictive load equations. These new equations, which are a function of Ng and are limited by the ratio of the wavelength to the deck width, provide more accurate predictions than existing empirical methods, and are expected to be useful to both engineers and researchers working towards the development of resilient coastal infrastructure.
Highlights
In coastal regions, transportation networks are often exposed to catastrophic waves during storms, hurricanes or tsunamis
Conclusions to investigate waysand of expanding the method to cases of oblique wave impact on the deck, since the current version is limited to the extreme idealizedwave scenario of a normal
Other limitations of the current numerical investigation and predictive equations include: (i) the fact that it is applicable only to decks that do not have diaphragms and allow the air to escape from the sides, and (ii) the consideration of only rigid supports without any lateral, vertical or rotational flexibility that could potentially affect significantly the reaction forces as seen in previous studies (e.g., [16,24,34,35,36,59])
Summary
Transportation networks are often exposed to catastrophic waves during storms, hurricanes or tsunamis. Istrati and Buckle [34] conducted fluid-structure-interaction (FSI) analyses to study the flexibility of both the superstructure and the connections during the tsunami impact on a simplified two-dimensional bridge model and pointed out the importance of structural dynamics and FSI for predicting both the applied loads and the reaction forces. Studied numerically the effect of Ng by modeling the impact of solitary waves on a smallscale (1:35) flat plate and an open-girder deck with Ng between two and six They concluded that the increase of Ng increases slightly the horizontal force, but has no effect on the vertical force. The objective of the current research study is to advance the fundamental understanding of solitary wave impact on coastal decks with a different number of girders and deck widths, and to develop simplified load equations that will account for the role of these two parameters. The first part of the paper will focus on the validation of an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) formulation with large-scale experimental data, the second part will present a parametric investigation of the role of the two aforementioned parameters, and the third part will develop improved predictive equations for wave loads
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