Probability Distribution Analysis of Hydrodynamic Wave Pressure on Large-Scale Thin-Walled Structure for Sea-Crossing Bridge

Evaluation of hydrodynamic wave pressure on large-scale structure is an important task in the wave load design of thin-walled components used in sea-crossing bridge. This study focuses on the probability distribution of hydrodynamic wave pressure on a large-scale thin-walled structure using on-site measurement data. An in-situ observation project is conducted to collect the wave elevation and the wave pressure on a rectangle cofferdam during a tropical cyclone event. With the measured data, the wave conditions and the fluctuating wave pressure are extracted, and the corresponding statistical characteristics such as the cumulative density function (CDF) are derived. In addition, a time domain boundary element model (TDBEM) is introduced to provide the statistical comparison. Several wave conditions derived by the statistical wave indicators during the cyclone event are fed to the numerical model for pressure investigation. Based on the statistical indicators and the modeling results, the comparison of wave pressure spatial distribution between TDBEM and the on-site measurement is presented. The pressure probability distribution is presented to further reveal the differences on the statistical characteristics. The resultant bias mainly occurs in the low-exceeding-probability range on the up-wave side and the high-exceeding-probability range on the down-wave side.