Abstract
Coastal bridge damage has become a severe issue of concern in the recent past with the destruction of a considerable number of bridges under the impact of waves during tsunami and storm surges. These events have become more frequent, with waves reaching the bridge deck and causing upliftment and destruction. Past studies have demonstrated the establishment of various theoretical equations which works well for the submerged deck and regular wave types but show much scatter and uncertainty in case of a deck that is above still water level (SWL). The present study aims to generate a solitary wave to represent an extreme wave condition like a tsunami in the numerical wave tank modeled using the open source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model REEF3D and to study the vertical impact force on the coastal bridge deck. A parametric study is carried out for increasing wave heights, girders spacing and depth for varying airgaps to analyze the effect of these parameters on the peak vertical impact force. It is observed that increasing the girder spacing and girder depth is effective in reducing the peak vertical impact force for the cases considered.
Highlights
Coastal bridges are subjected to wave impacts due to extreme events like tsunami and storm surges
A numerical investigation is carried out using the open source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model REEF3D (Bihs et al, 2016 [21], Bihs and Kamath [22]) to study the wave load on the bridge deck
There is a sudden increase of vertical impact force for the decks with girders due to air entrapment forces, which reduces with a further increase of the airgap
Summary
Coastal bridges are subjected to wave impacts due to extreme events like tsunami and storm surges. An experimental study on wave loads due to solitary waves was carried out on an elevated horizontal plate structure by French (1979) [2]. Lamberti et al (2011) [12] carried out a large scale experimental study using regular and irregular waves on close to prototype jetties to deduce the wave-induced horizontal forces on the deck front, and they have evaluated the spacing of pressure transducers effect in obtaining impact force. Seiffert et al (2014) [15] carried out both numerical and experimental study on a plate structure representing a coastal bridge under the action of solitary waves for different incident wave parameters and air-gap. The objective is to study the vertical wave impact on partially and fully elevated coastal bridge decks due to solitary wave for different airgaps. A deck with girders is analyzed with varying girder spacing, girder thickness, with and without railing and overhang at different submergence heights to quantify the effect of these parameters on the peak vertical impact force
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