A fluid–structure interaction model for assessing the safety of flood gate vibrations due to wave impacts

Abstract

This paper establishes a computationally efficient model to predict flood gate vibrations due to wave impacts including fluid–structure interaction. In contrast to earlier models, composite fluid domains are included to represent the situation of a flood gate in a dewatering sluice with the presence of an overhang that causes the confined-wave impacts. The dynamic response of the gate-fluid system is derived in the frequency domain using a substructuring mode matching technique, in which the gate vibrations are first expressed in terms of in-vacuo modes while the liquid motion is described as a superposition of linear potentials. Pressure impulse theory is employed to predict the impulsive wave impact loads, which are superposed on the quasi-steady wave loads. The computational efficiency of the developed model allows for a large number of simulations. This makes it possible for the first time to perform probabilistic evaluations for this type of problems without doing concessions on the accuracy of the physical modelling of the involved fluid–structure interaction processes. This is demonstrated by application of the developed models within a probabilistic framework resulting in the explicit quantification of the failure probability of flood gates subjected to wave impacts.