Ship Impact for Suederelbe Bridge Crossing in Hamburg

Abstract

AbstractIn the harbour of Hamburg a new bridge crossing the Suederelbe at Elbe km 620 has been planned. The bridge is part of the BAB26 motorway. Contracted by DEGES, a German company for highway planning and design, BAW determined the ship impact loads on the basis and methodology of EN 1991-1-7 (2006) on a site - specific basis, BAW (2016). The Suederelbe Bridge crossing will have a length of 695,60 m with main span bridging the fairway over 350 m. The pylon height of the main piers is planned to be 150 m. The clearance height of the Suederelbe crossing should be 53 m above sea level. The two pylons and main piers of the Suederelbe bridge crossing, which are to be positioned close to the bank, are at risk of ship impact. About 6,000 seagoing vessels up to 33,000 dwt are passing the future bridge. Fleet structure, ship passages, speeds, accident rates and nautical conditions were analysed and ship impact loads for the piers and protective structures were determined using a load model on one hand and a collision model on the other hand. Load and collision model are probabilistic and based on corresponding distributions of the decisive influencing parameters, whereby this approach represents state-of-the-art technology. Based on the collision model, the average time that the eastern pylon is being impacted is expected to be 470 years, while the average time for the western pylon is expected to be 1,240 years.The impact loads for the east pylon are dynamic loads with FFdyn = 17.5 MN for frontal impact and FLdyn = 4.0 MN for lateral impact. Out of the models the impact load can be determined as dependent on the distance of the piers (pylons) to the fairway center line. The variation of the span distance of the pylons show the plausibility of the developed and used modelling.