NUMERICAL ANALYSIS FOR IMPACT FORCE IN HIGH-ENERGY SHIP-BRIDGE PIER COLLISIONS

In the present paper, the collision force and the response of bulbous bows in the ship-bridge collisions are investigated by the numerical analysis, in which a bulbous bow of vessel with 5000-ton displacement is generated in the finite element (FE) code. The considered scenarios include ship bow impacts against rigid walls, rigid cylindrical piers and rigid rectangular piers with different velocities. The force - displacement curves and the energy absorption of the collision are studied in the nonlinear finite elements. The collision forces from the bulbous bow are compared with the suggested force-displacement curves in the requirement formulas, and then the difference between the FE analysis and these formulas are discussed.