A simplified analytical method for predictions of ship deckhouse collision loads on steel bridge girders

Bridges across busy navigation channels are under the threat of accidental ship collisions. Many research works have been conducted to investigate the structural responses during ship bow-bridge pier collisions. However, the collisions between the ship deckhouse and the bridge girder have not been well studied. In this paper, a container ship deckhouse impact with a floating bridge girder is investigated. The impact demand and the structural deformation during the deckhouse-girder collision are numerically obtained. Based on the deformation mechanism observed from the simulation, a simplified analytical method is proposed for the fast prediction of the impact force and energy dissipation. The impact resistance and energy dissipation calculated by the simplified analytical method are validated against the numerical results for various collision scenarios. Results show the proposed method can accurately and efficiently estimate the impact demand of deckhouse-girder collisions.