Handbook of port and harbour engineering: geotechnical and structural aspects

Abstract

Port and harbour engineering encompasses a wide range of subject areas and, over the last few decades, has involved approaches that are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Although an extensive literature has developed on many aspects of port and harbour engineering, there are relatively few books that provide a comprehensive coverage of this subject for use by practicing engineers. This handbook represents an attempt at providing such a contribution. Thus, the preface states: ithis book has been written... to provide port designers... with stateof-the-art information and guidelines to the design and construction of the basic types of marine structures.i At the outset, it should be stated that such an objective may be overly ambitious for a single volume, since a port engineer needs to rely on a vast amount of information, often scattered through many sources, in order to undertake the design of ports and harbours. The foreword to the book provides a concise summary of what maritime structural engineering is, as well as a good commentary on the crisis in understanding, which has been created by the ability to overanalyze using computers o often beyond the limits of the information that is available. This book, which is about 1000 pages long, has ten sections or chapters. Chapter 1 relates to the marine environment and covers topics such as water level variations, weather, wind, currents, waves, and ice. The second chapter focusses on design principles, and includes a classification of ports, the influence of ship characteristics on port design, and the design principles relating to navigation channels, harbour entrances, inner harbour areas, offshore installations, breakwaters, shore protection schemes, navigation aids, and mooring and fender systems. The third chapter treats design loads, including environmental loads associated with wind, currents, and waves; mooring loads; loads from cargo and equipment; ship impact loads; ice loads; seismic loads; and finally load combinations. The fourth chapter deals with geotechnical aspects of port and harbour engineering. The next four chapters relate to specific categories of structure: gravity-type quay walls, sheet-pile bulkheads, piled waterfront structures, and offshore deep