Dynamic Response of Caisson Plate to Wave Impact

Abstract
Recent experimental studies show that the impact pressures resulting from a wave breaking directly on a vertical wall are very severe in magnitude and short in duration. Some evidence in the literature suggests that these kinds of pressures are capable of causing structural damage to composite‐type breakwaters. This study is mainly concerned with the theoretical analysis of the response characteristics of a caisson plate under the wave impact loading. Impact pressure data is taken from recent experimental work. In the dynamic analysis of the caisson plate the classical elastic plate theory is used and the numerical results for the dynamic values of moments and transverse displacement are obtained by employing the method of finite elements together with a mode superposition technique. A new criterion is proposed to determine the number of modes to be considered in the analysis. The time histories of the moments and transverse displacement exhibit similar patterns and the dynamic values are considerably greater than the static values. The latter values are obtained by representing the maximum impact pressure distribution as a static load. A procedure for the dynamic design of caisson plates is proposed which is based on the dynamic magnification factor.

This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit: