Calculation Method of Hydrodynamic Forces on Circular Piers during Earthquakes
Publication: Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 22, Issue 11
Abstract
The flow field around a horizontally oscillating bridge pier during earthquakes is characterized by a high Reynolds number and a small Keulegan-Carpenter number. This study aimed at the fluid forces exerted on a circular bridge pier in quiescent water during earthquakes. By scaling the hydrodynamic equations, it is analytically shown that the inertial force dominates the drag force. This characteristic is further demonstrated by performing numerical simulations. A given earthquake is first decomposed into a series of equivalent harmonic components. Then, the hydrodynamic forces are computed in the numerical code. The numerical results confirm that the inertial force dominates the drag force, and the inertial coefficient is essentially equal to 1 for all conditions examined for the monochromatic and two-frequency oscillations as well as the actual earthquakes. This confirmation is crucial, because the dominance of inertial force means that the resultant force can be predicted with the linear superposition of decomposed frequency components, owing to the inertial force being linear in the fluid-flow acceleration.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 51478390, 51678491, and 51678489) and the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, Grant 2011CB013605-5).
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 22 • Issue 11 • November 2017
Copyright
© 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 15, 2016
Accepted: May 9, 2017
Published online: Sep 1, 2017
Published in print: Nov 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Feb 1, 2018
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