Forced Vibration Analysis of Stiffened Lock Gate Structure

Abstract

Abstract The impact of the surrounding fluid of a dam-reservoir system on the stiffened lock gate structure subjected to an external sinusoidal acceleration is examined. The resulting Laplace equation of fluid domain, neglecting the fluid's compressibility and viscosity in Navier-Stokes equations, is solved using the technique of separation of variables. The infinite length of the fluid domain is truncated near the lock gate to reduce the computation in the analysis process. The exchange of motion between the gate and the fluid is performed by transferring the pressure of the fluid to the gate and the acceleration of the gate to the fluid, and vice-versa. Both undisturbed and linearised free surface conditions are considered at the top surface of the fluid domain. The Newmark-beta method is used to solve the resulted equilibrium equations with the help of a written computer code in FORTRAN. Many example problems are presented to observe the behaviour of lock gate structure due to the effects of reservoir fluid. The designer may use the present results if the gate is exposed to cataclysmic events.