SIMPLIFIED SEISMIC ANALYSIS OF LOCK GATES

Abstract

peer reviewedThe paper deals with the seismic design of lock gates. When such structures are submitted to an earthquake, the water contained in the chamber is responsible for an additional hydrodynamic pressure acting on the gate. This one is the sum of three different parts, respectively called the convective, rigid and flexible contributions. The two first ones have already been extensively studied in the literature, but the flexible part is more difficult to assess as it is largely influenced by the coupling occurring between the fluid and the gate. To overcome this difficulty, it is of course possible to use finite elements software, but doing so is not always convenient. This is why some research have been undertaken to provide a rapid way for approximating the flexible pressure on lock gates. This is achieved by applying the analytical approach that is shortly presented in this paper. As a matter of validation, the results obtained through this simplified procedure are compared to numerical solutions. The agreement between both of them is found to be satisfactory