Effect of girder spacing and depth on solitary wave impact on coastal bridge deck for different airgaps

Abstract

Coastal bridge damage has become a severe issue of concern in the recent past with the destruction of a considerable number of bridges under the impact of waves during tsunami and storm surges. These events have become more frequent, with waves reaching the bridge deck and causing upliftment and destruction. Past studies have demonstrated the establishment of various theoretical equations which works well for the submerged deck and regular wave types but show much scatter and uncertainty in case of a deck that is above still water level (SWL). The present study aims to generate a solitary wave to represent an extreme wave condition like a tsunami in the numerical wave tank modeled using the open source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model REEF3D and to study the vertical impact force on the coastal bridge deck. A parametric study is carried out for increasing wave heights, girders spacing and depth for varying airgaps to analyze the effect of these parameters on the peak vertical impact force. It is observed that increasing the girder spacing and girder depth is effective in reducing the peak vertical impact force for the cases considered.