Extreme Response Analysis of an End-Anchored Floating Bridge

Abstract

Abstract During the design of a floating bridge, extreme structural responses are required to be properly evaluated for ultimate limit state (ULS) design check. This study addresses the estimation of extreme structural responses for an end-anchored curved floating bridge. The floating bridge, about 4600 m, consists of a cable-stayed high bridge part and a pontoon-supported low bridge part. The long-term extreme responses are approximated by using a engineering approach, i.e., the environmental contour method. The sea state with 100-year environmental conditions is considered, and a 90% fractile is used to calculate the short-term extreme responses by using the Gumbel method and the mean up-crossing rate (MUR) method based on 100 1-hour simulations with different seeds. The extreme responses are expressed as μ + κσ, where μ and σ are the ensemble mean and standard deviation, and κ is a multiplying factor. Numerical results show that structural responses are close to Gaussian distributed. κ of axial force and strong axis bending moment along the bridge girder estimated by both the Gumbel and MUR methods vary in the vicinity of 4. κ estimated by the two method deviates, especially for axial force. Moreover, for both methods the estimated κ deviates more significantly if fewer ensembles are used.