Experimental and analytical study on performance of anti-collision device using titanium steel and tires under impact load

Abstract

Anti-collision devices can reduce the damage of bridge columns under ship collision, and a new type of device is proposed in the paper using a combination of titanium steel and recycled tires. The use of titanium steel is to improve the corrosion resistance, and the use of recycled tires is to improve self-floating capacity as well as save the cost. Three test specimens were designed and tested to investigate the behavior of the device under impact load and reveal the failure mechanism; finite element models were conducted to analyze and compare with the experimental results. Also, parametric study is conducted to reveal the effect of parameters on the ultimate capacity of the device. The performances of different types of the anti-collision device are compared, and the failure mechanism is studied. The results show that the proposed device effectively improves the performance of buffering energy dissipation and durability under impact load.