Fatigue life of a sea water lift caisson

摘要

The structural fatigue erification of a steel sea water lift caisson, designed for 300 m water depth, is performed by means of two procedures of analysis. One of them is carried out to determine the annual damage through a deterministic analysis, using the static and dynamic bending moment and shear loads. The other method allows obtaining the joint stresses through a random nonlinear time-domain analysis, using the Finite Element Method. Fatigue damage is calculated based on a "Rainflow Counting Cycles" technique from the stress signal. Both procedures uses S-N curves and the Palmgren-Miner rule. Results are compared and commented.