Laboratory and Numerical Investigation of Extreme Flow Impact on Simplified Sea-Crossing Bridge Structures @proceedings{Chen, 2016,author={Chen, Kaicui and Liang, Qiuhua and Xiong, Yan and Qiang, Juan and Wang, Gang and Zheng, Jinhai},title={Laboratory and Numerical Investigation of Extreme Flow Impact on Simplified Sea-Crossing Bridge Structures},volume={The 26th International Ocean and Polar Engineering Conference},series={International Ocean and Polar Engineering Conference},pages={ISOPE-I-16-170},year={2016},month={06},abstract={Storm surge and tsunami may induce extreme flow/wave conditions and cause tremendous damage to human lives, buildings and structures in the coastal areas. Bridges are among the most vulnerable structures to these extreme hazardous flows/waves. With a focus on sea-crossing bridges where the piers may be the only/main structure receiving flow/wave impact, this work presents a series of laboratory experiments to investigate the extreme flow/wave impact on a simplified bridge model. Subsequently, the experimental measurements are used to validate a hydrodynamic model for reliable prediction, with results further compared with those estimated using standard design formulae.Storm surges and tsunamis may drive destructive flows and massive volumes of water onshore and cause tremendous damage to the coastal areas (Saatcioglu et al., 2005; Robertson et al., 2007). In addition to their direct threat to human lives, the resulting extreme waves and flooding may cause damages to and even destroy buildings and other structures. For example, in 2005, the extreme storm surge and floods following Hurricane Katrina caused the failure of man-made levees, rapidly inundated majority part of New Orleans, killed more than 1,833 people and left over one million people homeless (Robertson et al., 2007). On 11th March 2011, a mega tsunami struck East coast of Japan, travelled up to 10 km inland with a maximum run-up of over 40m, leading to over 15,000 deaths and wide-spreading damage to buildings and infrastructure, including nuclear power stations (Maruyama et al., 2012).Field missions have been conducted following major tsunami and storm surge events to survey the wave and flood damages to buildings and infrastructure, trying to gain better understanding of extreme wave/flow-structure interaction and learn lessons (Iemura et al., 2005; Ghobarah et al., 2006; Akiyama et al., 2012). Particularly, a large number of bridges in coastal areas have been reported to be damaged and collapse during these extreme events. There are typically three types of failure mechanisms, i.e. 1) bridge superstructure (decks) failure, 2) bridge superstructure-substructure connection failure, and 3) bridge substructure (abutments, supporting piers and foundations) failure. Due to the relatively low deck height of the coastal and traditional bridges, they may be overtopped and submerged during the extreme disastrous events, most commonly leading to superstructure failures and connection failures. These failure modes have been often observed after tsunamis or extreme storm surges. For this reason, most of the current studies related to extreme wave/flow impact on bridges have been focused on vertical and horizontal loading on superstructures (Chen et al., 2009; Bradner et al., 2010; Azadbakht and Yim, 2014; Seiffert et al., 2014a; Hayatdavoodi et al., 2014b).},eprint={https://onepetro.org/ISOPEIOPEC/proceedings-pdf/ISOPE16/ISOPE16/ISOPE-I-16-170/1336780/isope-i-16-170.pdf}}.

Qiuhua Liang, Kai-cui Chen, Jingming Hou, Yan Xiong, Gang Wang, Juan Qiang (2016). Hydrodynamic modelling of flow impact on structures under extreme flow conditions . Journal of Hydrodynamics.