ANALYSIS AND DESIGN OF DOLPHINS

This report has three parts. The main body discusses in detail the principles and considerations that enter into the problem of designing dolphins. This report is also a broad review of the state of the art. It discusses the various types of dolphins and brings together the experience in their design, their construction, and in their service behavior that has been reported but is widely scattered in the literature. The report also demonstrates various methods of analysis for dolphins and reports on the scant prototype test data that are available. A second part of this report is a paper, The Structural Action of Timber Pile Cluster Dolphins, by David Elms and Werner Schmid. This paper presents a generalized theory in matrix formulation for the structural analysis of a pile cluster having n piles. The theory is evaluated for dolphins in water depths of 20, 40 and 60 feet and for three timber pile cluster dolphins of 7, 19 and 30 piles that correspond to the standard dolphin design suggested by the Mooring Guide. This evaluation was carried out using an IBM 650 computer and was so programmed that with a few minor changes the computer could find the force distribution for a pile cluster of any number of piles.