Dynamic Analysis of Response of Cofferdam with Steel Sheet Piles Induced by Earthquake Excitation

Abstract

For its construction convenience and structure integrity, cofferdams are widely employed in port engineering. Past experience has shown that cofferdam are subjected to damage due to earthquake excitations. Numerical analyses with both response spectrum and step-by-step integration methods are conducted by using Lanczos eigenvalue extraction technique to obtain natural frequencies and modes, and solving dynamic equations with Newmark implicit method to consider geometric nonlinearity. The computational results show that the natural frequency of cofferdam system is low and the horizontal translation stiffness of cofferdam in positive direction is higher than that in negative direction. Under seismic excitation, the displacement response of inner steel sheet is much more obvious than that of outer one. And the distribution of horizontal displacements in steel sheets presents the characteristics that the corresponding values increase with their heights in the cofferdam system. On the contrary, the deviatonic stresses of cofferdam decrease with the augments of height.