Nonlinear analysis of barge crush behavior and its relationship to impact resistant bridge design

Bridge structures crossing navigable waterways must not only be designed to resist gravity, wind, and earthquake loads, but must also be capable of resisting ship and barge collision loads. Design specifications used both in the US and internationally employ empirical models of vessel crush behavior to produce codified procedures for computing equivalent static design loads due to vessel impact. In this paper, the ADINA finite element code is used to compute force-deformation relationships for several hopper barge crushing scenarios. Results obtained from the nonlinear finite element crush analyses are then compared to empirical crush models found in bridge design specifications.