Investigation of assessment method of axial crushing force of rake bow for bridge against ship collision

The collision between bridge and ship might cause severe damage of bridges. The purpose of the present paper is to find out empirical formulae of crushing force of ship rake bow, which can be adopted for the reliability analysis of bridge against ship. A reduced ship rake bow under axial crushing was tested to study the collapse behaviour and mechanic characteristic, which is used to calibrate the FE (finite element) model. The folding deformation and the crushing force-displacement curves are analyzed in detail. The existing intersection unit method is applied to assess the collapse force of ship bow using rigid plastic theory, and compare with the test results. It's found that the existing intersection unit method underestimate the crushing force for ship rake bow. Hence, based on the numerical results of trapezoidal cylinder under axial crushing, the existing empirical analytical formulae are modified for rake bow. For practice applications, the ship bow of an actual container under longitudinal compression is also numerically simulated to calibrate the developed analytical methods.