Environmental loads and sudden impacts induced by ship berthing operations acting on a multi-point mooring floating pier are investigated using both numerical and experimental methods, and results are presented. The floating pier is modeled as a connected rigid body moored to the sea floor with mooring lines. The response analysis during ship berthing operation is performed with a Finite Element (FE) model in time domain to find the dynamic behavior of the floating pier, the nonlinear restoring force provided by mooring lines and the connecting forces between pier modules. Fluid-structure interaction (FSI) is described using the Arbitrary Lagrange Eulerian method (ALE). Model Results verified the validity of the numerical simulations.
With increased exploitation activities of ocean resource, floating piers often act as loading and transferring platforms of material in military and civil domain due to their flexibility, reliability, low cost and adapting for the variety of water depths and kinds of ships can be berthed at the floating pier conveniently. A floating pier mentioned here is composed of connected modules. The models of a berthing ship and the floating pier consist of a floating multi-bodies system. The ship berths the floating pier frequently and gives sudden impacts on the floating pier, which endangers the safety of the floating pier. Thus, it's important to pay much more attention to the ship's berthing operation. Recently, researches have been focused on the collision between ships、ship and fixed harbor structure (Petersen, 1981; Chen Jiaqin 1992, Peng Zheng, 2003). Few work has been done about dynamic response of moored floating structures in ship berthing operation. Chen Dechun (2001) investigated impact forces for mooring chains as mooring floats in collision basing on the theory of energy conservation, but he didn't consider the effect of added mass.
