Finite Element Numerical Simulation Of Ship-Bridge Collision And Anti-Collision Equipment Study

Ship-bridge collision accident is often accompanied by significant property loss and casualties. With every year’s increasing number of river bridges and the flourishing water transportation trade, the contradiction between the two is inevitable, making it an urgency to give a deep research on the issue of ship-bridge collision. Based upon the development of finite element technology, the numerical simulation becomes the primary method in the research of the ship-bridge collision. The main works are as follows:1. Through analyzing the ship-bridge collision accident both at home and abroad, this paper put forward the research purpose and significance according to engineering instances, introduced the basic principle and method of the finite element simulation of collision and made a detail explanation on the key problems.2. With an adroit apprehension of research purpose and research theory, this paper made a numerical simulation of collision in various conditions, established the ship model, bridge pier model and solving by ANSYS/LS-DYNA, conducted the post-processing via LS-DYNA. The factors of ship-bridge collision were studied, including the initial speed, ship stiffness, the layout of bridge reinforcement, the water level when the collision occurred, the collision angle and so on. Numerical simulation results show that:ship initial speed is proportional to the peak collision force, ship and bridge pier damage increases as the speed increases; collision force and bridge pier damage increases as the ship stiffness increases; bridge pier reinforcement effect can be approximated by improving concrete elastic modulus; the collision results are different when the water level changes; the collision results of direction across bridge is more serious than of bridge direction.3. Comparing software simulation results with existing specification and empirical formula calculation results, the study found that each specification has its limitations, some of the simplified formulas are based on the ship quality and speed as the main reference variable, the others are only consider the ship quality, it should be select reasonably according to the practical engineering, and recommended to use numerical simulation to obtain more accurate results.4. The article designed the corresponding anti-collision equipment according to the bridge pier structure, that able to adapt to water level changes, through the study of collision results. The results of comparing anti-collision equipment with different stiffness found that, greater the stiffness of the anti-collision equipment, better the collision avoidance effect, but more serious damage to the ship.