BEHAVIORS OF A VERY LARGE FLOATING STRUCTURE SUPPORTED WITH DOLPHINS UNDER EARTHQUAKE LOADING

摘要

In recent years, tremendous research efforts have been directed toward developing very large floating structures (VLFSs) for the purposes of airports, terminals etc. on the sea to utilize ocean space. There is a VLFS which has a pontoon type structure supported with many dolphins and it is important to investigate sufficiently the behaviors of such VLFSs under earthquake loading, because large reaction forces will be exerted on the dolphins and fenders that connect the dolphins and the floating structure. This paper reports the results of the time history response analyses of a VLFS supported with dolphins with varying the period and velocity of the applied sinusoidal waves as an earthquake loading when gaps between fenders and dolphins are equal to zero. In the analyses, the floating structure supported with dolphins is modeled as a horizontally elastic plate and a rigid plate both supported with springs and dashpots through gap elements.