Ports 2022: Port Engineering

Physical model testing is recognized to be a vital element for the confidence and security it adds to ports and maritime engineering design. Consequently, many clients consider physical model testing as an a priori step for a safe and economical design. This fact was exemplified by two major port expansion projects, namely, the ports of Haifa and Ashdod, Israel, where the port owner has embarked on a phased development plan that includes a significant amount of physical modeling work. In particular, the development envisaged broadening the port basin and lengthening the existing outer breakwaters. Accordingly, the designed breakwater layouts were physically modeled and tested for their structural integrity and functionality. The testing campaigns have created an excellent platform to evaluate the design, first with theory, and next with the observations and measurements gathered from the physical modeling. This paper presents the approach, results, and lessons learned from both projects, lessons which continue to contribute to subsequent model testing for other port projects.

The Royal Hawaiian groin is located on Waikiki Beach, Hawaii, and anchors 1,730 linear ft (527 m) of critical beach in the heart of Waikiki. The groin was originally constructed in 1927, and by 2012 was in very obvious need of replacement. Rock rubble mound breakwater and groin construction has been traditionally used in Hawaii, and is aesthetically the desired construction methodology for coastal structures. Oceanographic design parameters were based on a potential direct hurricane strike and likely future sea level rise. The groin design is a hybrid structure; the base is composed of armor stone, and the crest is made of cast-in-place fiber-reinforced concrete. The groin is also adaptable to sea level rise by permitting a relatively easy increase in the concrete crest cap elevation without the need for heavy equipment to dismantle and reconstruct the groin. Construction in normally densely crowded Waikiki was going to be difficult; however, when construction started in May 2020 Hawaii was in COVID-19 lockdown, the hotels were closed, and Waikiki was empty, with no one to be impacted by closed beach access or construction noise.

Discrepancies in existing guidelines for fender design suggest the need to re-evaluate the approaches currently in place. This paper presents a methodology for developing load factors using reliability- and performance-based assessment, focusing on the uncertainties associated with characteristic berthing velocities. Using Monte Carlo statistical analysis, this paper examines berthing velocity data collected at a marine oil terminal in Northern California. For each Monte Carlo simulation run, resulting fender reaction forces were calculated to determine the required load factor for achieving a prescribed target probability of non-exceedance. Ten million simulations were run to eliminate the variability inherent in Monte Carlo analysis and determine a consistently reliable load factor for the site. This approach presents one possible method for revising prescribed load factors in future design guidelines and standards.

A large expansion and repair project is underway at the Washington State Ferry Seattle Terminal. Planning and design began in 2012, construction started in 2017, and the scheduled completion date is 2023. Key upgrades include replacement of a timber trestle with a new concrete trestle. Steel pipe piles support the concrete trestle. At completion, this project will improve safety and access by reducing bicycle, pedestrian, and vehicle conflicts. The project will provide 1,300 m² of shallow fish water habitat area and remove over 4,500 metric t of creosote-treated timber piles from Puget Sound. In 2018, a bright orange corrosion product appeared on the newly installed steel piling underneath the concrete trestle. Testing revealed the presence of sulfate-reducing bacteria as well as other corrosion-influencing microbes on the steel surface. This paper details the steps taken to identify the microbes, measure the extent of their effects on the piling, and the corrosion plan developed to mitigate the accelerated corrosion.

Concrete structures exposed to a marine environment can experience high maintenance costs and reduced service life due to corrosion. This is particularly true for concrete reinforced piles in seawater (or brackish water) where an individual concrete pile can have a variety of exposure conditions, including airborne chlorides, periodic wetting by splashing, regular wetting by tidal activity, and fully submerged. Galvanic jacketing systems have been successfully employed to address active corrosion on concrete piles in all exposure conditions. There are different variations of galvanic systems that incorporate zinc-based embedded anodes, stay-in-place forms, and submerged bulk zinc anodes. Selecting the best galvanic jacket for the application will help to address corrosion-induced deterioration and will preserve and extend the service life of concrete piles in the marine environment.

Berth 11 at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, supports the overhaul, repair, and modernization of US Navy submarines. The $40m Berth 11 repair project includes a new 1,166 ft long bulkhead in front of the original open wharf structure, supplemental piles to eliminate crane capacity restrictions, mooring hardware, dockside services, and new fendering to accommodate deep draft camels for berthing the submarines. The bulkhead design concept was driven by subsurface conditions that includes high rock and limited overburden along the berth. The design uses rock socketed W36 king piles, precast concrete shutter panels, and rock anchor tie-backs. The top of rock variability, coupled with the need to fabricate the shutter panels and piles in advance, required innovative details to accommodate site conditions, installation sequence, and construction tolerances.

The Port of Los Angeles (POLA) is the largest container port in the United States, serving as a critical supply chain gateway for international trade and the delivery of goods. To remain competitive in the global shipping container market, POLA continuously evaluates its facilities for areas of improvement and upgrades. To that end, the Berths 226–236 terminal redevelopment project was completed in 2022. The project upgraded the terminal’s wharf capacity and backland infrastructure to accommodate the berthing of larger vessels and additional ship-to-shore cranes to increase the throughput capacity. This paper focuses on the challenges presented by the upgrades to the mooring hardware and berthing fenders, deepening of the berth, and COVID-19 pandemic impacts.

Mooring hardware load testing has had significant improvements since this author presented at the Ports ’16 conference the paper titled “Case Study: Bollard Load Testing at US Naval Facilities.” This paper reviews the current guidelines for inspection and testing of mooring hardware based on standards recently revised. The paper then looks at the types of equipment being used for the various types of mooring hardware testing levels and the benefits of each type of testing. The paper then explains some of the author’s own experience with development of mooring hardware testing equipment that can meet the needs of industry, in a cost effective and efficient manner.

The combination of sea level rise and deteriorating waterfront infrastructure have progressively threatened the United States Naval Academy (USNA) in Annapolis, Maryland. Parts of the USNA have historically experienced flooding events, and sea level rise will increase the likelihood of flooding damage to the historical campus infrastructure. Relocating the vulnerable campus is not an option, so the navy has begun efforts to protect one of its most valuable and historic installations. This project is slated for inclusion in the larger, comprehensive USNA Military Installation Resilience Plan, currently under development. This paper highlights the important design considerations and challenges to account for sea level rise in waterfront rehabilitation projects, including bulkhead components, mooring, access, aesthetics, historical monuments, and stormwater drainage.

The M_w 7.8 2016 Ecuador earthquake caused significant damage to the Port of Manta located in Ecuador. The port has several facilities including a rockfill breakwater, two international piers, 17 small fishing marginal wharves, buildings, several storage yards, and roads. Most of its infrastructure experienced different levels of damage. Liquefaction and soil lateral spreading were determined as the main causes of the port damage. After the earthquake, the port’s infrastructure went through a systematic process that included the rehabilitation design of existing infrastructure, and the design of new facilities. This paper presents the studies performed in order to rehabilitate the facilities of the Port of Manta. The paper describes the techniques used to rehabilitate the structural facilities such as the international piers, fishing marginal wharves, and the operations building. Finally, the paper describes the techniques used to rehabilitate the geotechnical facilities such as the breakwater, the yards, and the internal roads.

This paper documents unplanned lateral pile tests that were performed in support of the recent replacement of Pier 8 at Naval Base San Diego. Lateral design of the pier was governed by seismic loading. Design parameters were initially based upon the results of a soil exploration program provided with the request for proposal (RFP), with the intent that the recommendations for vertical capacity would be confirmed by the results of a test-pile program. However, these results were unexpected, indicating soils with significantly lower capacity than anticipated. Although it was determined that the required vertical capacity was achievable, a significant degree of uncertainty in the lateral performance of the pier remained. In order to address these concerns, a lateral-load-testing program for the existing test piles was developed. The methodology, results, and design application of the lateral testing is presented in this paper, providing a reference for other design professionals encountering similar challenges.

Steel sheet pile cellular piers and bulkheads have served as an integral part of modern marine infrastructure and are commonplace at ports, shipyards, and marine terminals across the globe. Steel sheet pile structures in the marine environment will generally reach their service life as a result of significant deterioration of the steel elements which typically originates within the corrosion aggressive tidal zone. This corrosion generally necessitates the repair, replacement, or reconstruction of the structure at significant cost to the owner. Unlike linear bulkheads and other similar steel structures, repairs to steel cells add an additional challenge due to the interconnection and interdependence of adjacent cells. Solutions utilized in the past include over-sheeting or under-sheeting existing steel cells to create a new structure and are often not a viable solution due to structural pilings within the cells supporting pier. Similarly, demolition and replacement of a cellular structure can be difficult and costly. The cellular pier discussed herein is one such case where neither demolition nor installing new cells was an option. This paper illustrates a rehabilitation solution which re-faces the solid fill cellular pier but relies upon the remaining capacity of the existing deteriorated structure to reduce loading conditions on the new linear steel replacement wall.

The Port of Los Angeles (POLA) is replacing the existing Berths 238–239 marine oil terminal (MOT) facilities with a new 1,000-ft long MOT, which will be capable of accommodating Panamax class vessels. The new MOT at Berth 238 will be California Building Code (CBC) Maritime Oil Terminals Engineering and Maintenance Standards (MOTEMS) compliant and consist of a concrete unloading platform, two breasting dolphins, four exterior landside mooring anchors, catwalks, and an access trestle. The unloading platform topside facility will be installed by the tenant, PBF energy, after the new MOT is constructed. This paper addresses key considerations for the selection and design of key components of the new MOT, including the unloading platform deck and foundation, berthing and mooring structures, and quick release hook devices and associated instrumentation. The following areas will be considered in this paper: seismic design, passing vessel and dynamic mooring analysis, and site constraints concerns during construction.

The Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor (NBK-Bangor) Service Pier, in the state of Washington, supports the homeporting and maintenance operations for naval attack submarines in the Puget Sound region. The existing facility, built in the late 1970s and expanded in the early 2000s, typically services multiple submarines per year. The service pier is currently undergoing a major operational upgrade, extending the existing pier by 520-ft (158.5 m) to better meet the needs of multiple classes of attack submarines (SSNs) with homeporting and repair capabilities. Key features of the pier extension are two deep draft concrete camels for berthing and mooring of the submarines. Measuring nominally 95 ft long by 19-ft wide (28.96-m by 5.8-m), these camels will be in relatively deep water along the waterside face of the pier extension. The pier deck, camels, and moored submarines will be connected via a network of movable pedestrian brows, platforms, and elevated walkways to accommodate 20-ft (6.1 m) tidal fluctuations. This paper outlines the features of these camels and describes the design process to meet strength requirements and serviceability criteria to provide a 50-year design life.

Elevated conveyors are commonplace throughout the world’s ports and marine terminals for the shipment of bulk products such as coal and potash. By their nature the terminals are typically close to tidewater and frequently located on reclaimed land that can be prone to above average seismic movements associated with soil liquefaction. The lands associated with many of these facilities were constructed prior to the development of modern seismic design standards that would now have required different construction methodologies to address liquefaction and the associated effects on ground movements and bearing capacities. In particular, the differential ground movements along the length of or between adjacent structures become significant considerations. Furthermore, ground improvements are often challenging at existing port facilities due to impacts on existing infrastructure, placing the onus on structures to withstand kinematic loading without compromising their ability to resist inertial loading. The present study provides a concept that can be applied to new construction port projects, complete with comprehensive geotechnical and structural analyses to prove the efficacy of the system.

After a several-year period of historically low water levels between 1999 and 2014, the Great Lakes returned to their average seasonal water levels and then saw record high monthly levels through 2019 and continuing to 2020. Although water levels stabilized in 2021, normal trends are becoming increasingly more affected by environmental factors. This paper provides a discussion and summary of the factors affecting water levels in the Great Lakes and inland water system, including seasonal variations, cyclical multi-year variations, climate change, and glacial isostatic adjustments. It will conclude with a discussion of considerations for future project planning and design scenarios related to maintaining operational continuity through sustained periods of high and low inland water levels.

The design of fender-supporting structures requires proper application of load and safety factors in consideration of berthing velocities, abnormal berthing conditions, manufacturer tolerances, fender performance, etc. Current codes and guidelines remain inconsistent and unclear on how each consideration should be incorporated, resulting in inconsistent, overly-conservative, or at worst, unsafe designs. This paper applies Monte Carlo statistical modeling to examine fender reaction forces resulting from berthing velocity data. Engineers can use the resulting distribution of reaction forces to develop safe and acceptable load factors to design supporting structures to fit target reliabilities similar to those found in ASCE 7.

The NYC Ferry system, which re-established its first route in 2017, has experienced astronomical growth and exceeded ridership expectations. This resulted in a rapid, large-scale expansion of the ferry fleet, and is necessitating creation of a second, larger, and more robust operation and maintenance facility: Homeport II. Designated to be located in Atlantic Basin, Brooklyn, the upgrades to the site will create a homeport that will provide the operator with the ability to provide nightly maintenance of the NYC Ferry vessels as well as a place to shelter the vessels while not in use. The original Homeport I facility, put into service in 2018, offers lessons learned and a source of valuable operator feedback to be incorporated into the design of the new facility. This paper provides a case study of creation of a major homeport facility in a dense urban environment. Key design strategies addressing limited site area, resilience requirements, and lessons learned from the original Homeport I project will be presented. At the time of the conference, the construction of Homeport II will be approximately 50% complete.

The long-term operation of existing oil transfer terminals along waterways relies heavily on the soils below. Historically, sheet piles are driven directly into the subgrade to stabilize shoreline structures; however, dolomite is shallow and strong in the Chicagoland area and often inhibits traditional driving of sheet piles. By encapsulating an existing terminal perimeter with a combination king pile/sheet pile wall system, a new offset structure can be independent of the existing dock, and the wall can fully develop its strength from rock socket embedment. This approach also minimizes dock outage time during rehabilitation and leaves the existing terminal structure to remain beneath the new working platform. Although combination wall systems are more expensive and more challenging to install compared to traditional sheet pile walls, they are more feasible and offer greater flexibility at strong rock sites.

PortMiami is performing the North Bulkhead Berths 1–6 Realignment Project to replace the existing bulkhead along the North Channel to maintain cruise operations safely at six berths, which involves extending the berthing line 16.5 m into the channel. A dynamic mooring study was performed to address key mooring and berthing challenges, which included wide range of sizes of cruise ships from six major cruise lines; new bulkhead elevations; future sea level rise; varying passenger boarding bridge configurations at each berth; terminal door locations; apron operations; and berthing during construction and after completion of the project. The technical approaches employed in this study represent integrated utilization of state-of-the-art marine modeling tools to develop optimized mooring and berthing layouts and systems for these six cruise berths. The technical approach applied is one that could be of great value to future berth developments that involve a wide range of ship sizes.

The Equinor South Riding Point Sea Island Oil Transshipment Terminal in the Grand Bahamas incurred major damage due to Hurricane Matthew in October 2016. The storm resulted in total failure and loss of major berthing dolphins and interconnecting bridges. Consequently, Equinor required detailed engineering design and construction of new berthing dolphins and access bridges to replace the failed structures. Like the original structures, the replacement dolphins consist of a cantilevered design, which is somewhat unique and unconventional considering the given water depth and size of design vessels. To improve upon the original design of the damaged structures, several design enhancements were implemented including the use of large diameter pipe piles socketed and grouted into pre-bored holes drilled into the seafloor bedrock, the addition of rubber cone fenders to better absorb vessel impact energy, and the use of a prefabricated steel jacket deck structure to reduce pile moments by inducing double curvature bending. The enhancements were proven effective in 2019 when the Sea Island marine structures survived Hurricane Dorian, a level 5 hurricane.

This paper will present a case study of the evaluation and repair of a barge dock on the Ohio River. The dock facilitates the delivery by barge of raw materials for a major manufacturer. The dock is a three-sided steel sheet pile wall structure and was constructed in the early 1990s. A failure occurred in the upstream wall in 2015 that resulted in that wall bowing out horizontally and rotating vertically, such that the top of the wall is now located approximately 15 ft (4.6 m) upstream of its original position. Several of the tie rods that supported the wall were broken. However, the sheet pile remained intact, and complete failure of the wall did not occur. Later tie rod inspections revealed that additional tie-rod failures continued to occur, calling into question the long-term stability of the dock. This paper aims to present the methods used to evaluate the condition of the dock and develop a strategy for its repair and continued long-term safe use. This paper will address issues that arose during the project related to tie-rod failures, flooding, scour protection, corrosion protection, and the susceptibility of high-strength steels to hydrogen embrittlement and stress corrosion cracking.

Fender systems are commonly used in bridge engineering to protect bridge piers from vessel impacts and to redirect vessels in safe operation and navigation zones. Among the existing construction methods for fender systems, the use of cluster drilling has gained significant popularity in recent years because it combines an environmentally-friendly construction process that reduces dust production and minimizes noise and ground vibrations as well as presents both time and cost-efficiency. This article presents the construction sequence of a new fender system along the New Jersey side of the New Goethals Bridge (November 2017–March 2018) by KWM (Kiewit-Weeks-Massman, AJV) as part of the Goethals Bridge replacement project. The structure consisted of sea timber vertical posts and horizontal walers supported on a single row of concrete-filled steel piles. The advantages of the cluster drilling method over other available methods are discussed with emphasis on the control of environmental risks.

Engineering design to rehabilitate aging port structures can be challenging and often involves complex structure-soil-water interactions. When a bulkhead or filled, cellular cofferdam pier nears the end of its useful life, rehabilitation likely entails constructing a bulkhead outboard of the existing structure. Traditionally, design of the bulkhead neglects the existing structure. However, consideration of the interaction of the existing and new structures can be beneficial to the new bulkhead design if the existing structure maintains sufficient structural integrity to afford load redistribution for the new bulkhead. Estimating such load redistribution is complicated by the overlapping soil-structure interactions of the two systems. Embracing 3D finite element analyses provides an innovative approach to evaluate these overlapping soil-structure systems and the effect on load redistribution that an existing structure may have on a new bulkhead. Such load redistributions can lead to reduced construction costs and permissible construction operations that may otherwise be restricted.

The Port of Long Beach (POLB) recognizes the value and power of Enterprise Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to manage real estate, assets, and other relevant information. From the beginning, POLB’s approach was to centralize GIS database that served the entire organization and provide complex spatial content through a simple user-friendly web-viewer (Port Atlas), CAD environments, published map exhibits, and mobile computers. Data and content is managed from a single source and displayed as useful information for intended audiences and stakeholders. POLB uses GIS extensively to manage and maintain infrastructure such as underground utilities, rail, roads, traffic signs, leases, geotechnical reports, bathymetry/dredging data, and much more. Using GIS has allowed POLB to more effectively and efficiently communicate and disseminate data among staff, other agencies, consultants, and constituents. With substantial infrastructure investments, POLB will continue leveraging GIS technology to stay competitive in the global trade industry and to be the port of choice; GIS is at the heart of POLB’s business and engineering operations.

The New Kapālama Container Terminal project is the cornerstone of the state of Hawai‘i’s (State) Harbor Modernization Program to modernize operations and build resiliency into the state’s harbor system for the 21st century. The construction of the second phase of the project incorporates several state-of-the-art design elements, including an anchored steel bulkhead combination wall system comprised of steel king piles and infill sheet piles, stone column ground improvement, maintenance and capital dredging involving offshore disposal and beneficial reuse of dredge material, and installation of two new horizontal directional drilled water lines. Regulatory permitting of the project required extensive coordination with the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Marine Fisheries Service, Hawai‘i State Department of Health, Hawai‘i State Department of Land and Natural Resources, and other resource agencies because the project involves construction in the waters of the United States and impacts marine resources.

The offshore wind (OSW) resource in Northern California is among the highest in the country, and floating OSW has enormous potential to help California meet renewable energy targets, generate local jobs, and reduce wildfire risk from overland energy transmission. A study was conducted for the state of California’s Ocean Protection Council to evaluate the need and opportunities for improving port (marine terminal and navigation) infrastructure in Humboldt Bay to support the floating OSW industry in Northern California. The study concluded that there is no existing marine terminal in Humboldt Bay that can support buildout of a floating OSW farm without investment. Required marine terminal upgrades include a new wharf, berth dredging, and upland ground improvements. Existing navigation infrastructure can support marshaling activities, but the throughput rate (number of turbines installed per year) and the size of floating devices may be constrained without modifications to the federal navigation channel.

Operational needs at Maher Terminals LLC (Maher) at Port Elizabeth in the Port of New York and New Jersey required that Berths 64 and 66 be deepened from 45 ft water depth to 50 ft. Installation of a new wall at the berths would have been costly, impacted operations, and disrupted the coping line of the longer marginal wharf. An innovative solution was developed to consider attenuation of lateral load provided by the existing waterside steel crane beam piles. These piles, once considered, would reduce the earth load applied to the existing bulkhead due to soil arching. Two-dimensional (2D) Plaxis finite element analyses performed considering the contribution of these crane piles show that the existing bulkhead could provide the required stability without installing a new wall, provided that additional post-tensioned tie rods be added. The deepening was successfully carried out with a wall displacement monitoring program. The paper summarizes the innovative process to develop the solution and details of the deepening analyses, as well as the monitoring results.

Public access to the USS Arizona Memorial was suspended in May 2018 when the anchoring system of the floating dock failed at the location where visitors disembark from navy-operated ferry boats. A new mooring system was designed to effectively hold the dock in position under varying tide levels while limiting the horizontal movement of the dock. The mooring system uses a series of 12 “helical” galvanized steel piles screwed into the seafloor. The floating concrete dock is attached to the piles with constant tension elastic rubber hawsers, integrated with high-strength synthetic rope. Construction for the repair project consisted of demolition and removal of the existing anchor system, installation of the helical piles and elastic mooring system, and in situ load testing of the helical mooring piles. Construction was completed in three months, and the reopening of Hawaii’s USS Arizona Memorial occurred on September 1, 2019, following a 15-month closure.

Most coastal infrastructure is designed according to an acceptable risk of a specific event (e.g., the 100-year flood). However, there are challenges with establishing risk-based design conditions for problems that depend on multiple forcing conditions, such as compound flooding. For compound flooding, the flood extent will depend on both storm surge and precipitation, and there may be multiple combinations of these variables that result in the same flood extent. Traditionally, this problem might be addressed by making a conservative assumption in one of these variables and performing an extremal analysis on the other; however, this process is fraught with uncertainty, and the results of this method do not offer any true statistical representation of risk. This paper explores a simple methodology for establishing joint extremal probabilities between environmental variables that may be correlated, such as precipitation and storm surge, which are both associated with tropical storms.

The study presented in this paper uses results from five large-scale physical centrifuge models on pile-supported wharves to evaluate the accuracy of Newmark sliding block analysis combined with pile-pinning effects in estimating kinematic demands on piles. The piles in the centrifuge tests were subjected to varying degrees of liquefaction-induced lateral ground deformations from multiple shaking events creating a total of ten (10) well-instrumented “case histories” to evaluate the applicability of existing design methods to predict kinematic demands, the results of which are used to propose measures to improve existing methods. The results show that median Newmark displacements provide a good estimate of the permanent end-of-shaking displacements, but underestimated the peak transient displacements, and that median + 1σ Newmark displacements provided a good estimate of the peak transient displacements, which represent the peak pile demand. Design recommendations are provided to improve the kinematic demand estimates on piles that include incorporating pile-pinning effects in Newmark and limit equilibrium analyses.

The Nassau Cruise Port (NCP) is the Bahamas’ largest cruise port and lies in the heart of the capital’s tourist district. It encompasses more than 5,000 linear ft (1,524 m) of existing mooring structures divided into five berths. The port is currently undergoing a major enhancement and expansion to its marine infrastructure enabling the port to serve six cruise vessels simultaneously and to increase the overall tourist traffic to the island. The paper will describe the phased and focused approach implemented by the selected design-build team with the overall goal of setting an example for similar enhancement projects in busy ports. Recently, Global Ports Holdings, the world’s largest cruise terminal operator, won a long-term concession for improving and operating the port. Execution of the marine enhancements was commenced by the project team using a FIDIC Silver Book design-build contract. The team adopted customized solutions for each of the major areas of marine improvements with the goal to provide a 50-year design life. Marine works included the creation of two new marina areas, a mega-yacht berth and improvement of the existing cruise berths including repairs, replacement, expansion of the five existing berths and construction of a new sixth cruise berth. The enhancements involved dredging, repair of existing structures, and construction of a new 700-ft (213 m) long pile-supported pier extension with a mooring dolphin to the east. The new port will receive the latest generation of cruise vessels and accommodate mega yachts at a separate berth. The scope includes reclamation of approximately 4-acres (1.6 hectares), construction of a new tied-back quay wall to lengthen one existing berth, and construction of additional areas for onshore tourist activities. Two new small craft marina areas (one with a new pile-supported restaurant) were built to supplement tourist activities. The project included all facets of maritime works, including demolition, dredging, filling/reclamation, installation of driven piles, installation of cantilever and tied-back combi-wall bulkheads, installation of customized precast solutions, and in situ placement of heavily reinforced marine concrete. The design-build team’s innovative design solutions addressed the site’s challenging geotechnical conditions consisting of limestone of significant variability in both strength and depth. The innovative design approach and construction sequencing effectively overcame the challenge of compromised availability of labor and materials due to the pandemic. Construction of the marine enhancements will be completed in 2022.

In current practice, debris-field impact loading for near-water structures is usually derived from (1) infrequent case histories, (2) simplified analytical equations, and (3) practitioner experience. Via advanced numerical simulation of tsunami-driven debris-field impacts at multiple scales and conditions, we are now forging a modeling approach to address a wider range of scenarios. Broadened cases are characterized, with chaotic natures expressed stochastically. The analytical tools have the potential to strengthen the basis of ASCE 7 guidelines and to encompass events not yet described in the code.

To analyze and design piers and wharves, engineers must reference and integrate more than 40 national and international existing standards and guidelines. In 2019, the American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) Coasts, Oceans, Ports and Rivers Institute (COPRI) voted to create a standards committee to develop a new Design Standards for Piers and Wharves to address the lack of a comprehensive standard or guidance in the United States. The purpose of this committee is to create a consensus-driven, single resource document that provides consistent analysis and design guidance for determining loads, load combinations, and load factors to design for mooring, berthing, and metocean conditions. This new ASCE/COPRI Design Standards for Piers and Wharves will apply to the design, construction, alteration, expansion, upgrade, repair, rehabilitation, and replacement of piers and wharves or near-shore marine structures. The purpose of this standard is to provide minimum requirements, loads, load combinations, hazard levels, associated criteria, and performance goals based on current scientific and engineering knowledge, experience, and industry practice. This paper provides a summary of the new ASCE/COPRI Design Standards for Piers and Wharves by topic area and includes technical challenges and identifies potential research needs.

A new export facility required the installation of three new, fixed 2,000 tph grain shiploaders at an existing wharf. The site is located within a high seismicity zone with liquefiable soils. Each shiploader foundation was constructed as an independent structure from the existing wharf, which was expected to undergo significant damage and lateral displacements in a seismic event due to liquefaction. The locations of the new shiploaders required cutting the existing post-tensioned concrete deck to fit new foundation piles and provide a gap between the structures to minimize pounding during seismic activity. The existing wharf was also modified to introduce seismic fuses such that it could experience localized failure without impacting the new foundations. Each shiploader has a self-weight of approximately 600 t, and their foundations consist of a concrete deck atop vertical steel pipe piles. The geotechnical analysis software FLAC was used to estimate a maximum displacement of 1.3 m at the top of the new foundation structure due to liquefaction and lateral spreading. The foundation was analyzed via SAP2000 structural analysis software. To accommodate the large lateral displacement demands, a heavily reinforced pile-plug and pile-to-deck connection was required. This paper presents the unique engineering solutions that were implemented.

When a client required that an existing barge terminal in northern British Columbia, Canada, be moved to a new, exposed site in ten weeks’ time and with only a few days of downtime, innovative solutions were required to design, complete environmental and navigational permitting, and construct the new facility. The solution involved using components traditionally used in the offshore industry such as large drag anchors and high-capacity mooring chain attenuators to significantly reduce potential environmental impacts to streamline permitting, reduce the procurement lead time, and reduce construction time. A large barge was retrofitted into a floating breakwater and mooring lead, and modular floats were used to support the relocated loading ramp. A floating breakwater on chains and anchors at this site would typically have been difficult to design due to the potential for resonance with waves that regularly form in the long channel. However, by using high-capacity mooring chain attenuators intended for offshore vessels, the motions were significantly decreased. After permitting approvals were obtained, removal and modification of components from the existing terminal and construction of the new terminal were completed in just seven days. The new terminal, which was originally designed to operate for only 18 months, is now planned to be removed and relocated for use at a different site.

Seawall design and construction have advanced immensely over the past 1,500 years. Modern designs employ a wide array of construction means and are built with various materials. From a practical and economic perspective, selecting the optimal seawall for a specific site is an essential and challenging engineering subject. At Alameda Marina, highly variable site conditions required systematic evaluation of many types of seawalls to achieve a cost-effective design and minimize the risks for construction claims. The evaluation criteria for selecting seawalls included cost, seismic robustness, durability, constructability, considering possible underground obstructions, and environmental restrictions. As a result, three different types of seawalls were selected for construction: (1) a soldier pile and lagging system was selected for the seawall at the west segment of the shoreline, (2) a reinforced concrete L-wall on piles was selected at the central segment of the shoreline, and (3) a sheet pile wall with tiebacks and deadman was selected at the east segment of the shoreline. Compared to the preliminary concept design, the final design of the seawalls achieved a significant cost saving with improved constructability and minimal risks for project cost escalation.

Availability of dredged material disposal facilities is becoming increasingly limited throughout the United States, and the need to maximize their storage capacity to support navigation dredging, in particular, is of utmost importance. A case study is presented to illustrate how a decade-long implementation of an intensive management program for desiccation-drying and the removal of dried dredged materials could successfully optimize the storage capacity and design life of a confined disposal facility. Data collected to monitor and quantitatively assess the performance of the intensive management program indicates that its implementation is on track to achieve the projected design life of the disposal cells. Lessons learned on dredged material management and the success of the intensive management program are also discussed.

The Boston Barrier Tidal Flood Defence Scheme, in Boston, Lincolnshire, UK, will provide improved flood protection for 14,300 properties. Part of the scheme involves upgrading assets at the 140-year-old Port of Boston for the next 100 years, including climate change. The port’s original wet dock entrance will be widened through construction of new steel piled walls on either side of the entrance, and the current lock gates will be replaced by the UK’s largest set of vertical sector gates. These entrance works also allow the port to accommodate larger vessels. This paper describes the operational, design, and construction challenges in undertaking these upgrade works, including 3D geotechnical finite element modelling, soil-structure interaction analysis, and integration of temporary and permanent works during construction.

Palmer Station is a United States (US) research station in Antarctica. It was originally constructed in 1968 and operated by the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) of the National Science Foundation. With no air strip, all supply and personnel transfer operations are by vessel during the summer months. This project consists of replacing the aged cellular cofferdam bulkhead pier with a new steel pile founded concrete pier. Designed and fabricated in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, components took over six months to be prepared and two months to be transported nearly 8,700 nautical mi (14,000 km) to the project site. Modular prefabricated components designed to minimize complex onsite construction include precast, prestressed, and post-tensioned concrete pile caps and deck panels supported by drilled and rock socketed galvanized steel pipe piles. This paper outlines the unique design features and significant logistical planning and collaboration undertaken between the owner, owner’s representative, design team, and contractor.

Container terminals worldwide that are near airports often have significant height restrictions requiring low profile ship-to-shore container cranes (LPCs). Current generation LPCs are significantly heavier and more complex, and present challenges for crane and wharf designers. They can weigh 6,000 kip (2,680 t), with 400 ft (122 m) long, 20 ft (6.1 m) deep truss booms that shuttle back and forth, resulting in unusually large loads on the wharf girder system. This paper follows the paper co-authored by Arun Bhimani and Anna Dix of Liftech and Claude Gentil of Port Everglades for the ASCE COPRI Ports 2019 conference outlining key considerations for design of the infrastructure supporting some of the largest LPCs. It presents an overview of the recently completed construction of the crane rail girder system and other infrastructure to support up to eight LPCs. It briefly explains the crane and girder systems, design and construction issues encountered, and key lessons learned. Ports that require LPCs or standard A-frame type ship-to-shore container cranes will benefit from this paper.

Countermeasures such as seawalls and submerged breakwaters have been constructed to protect coastal communities from extreme waves, including tsunamis. Extensive studies have been performed to examine tsunami wave forces on structures, but there are few studies to evaluate the effects of defensive structures on alleviating tsunami inundations and loadings on buildings. The current study presents a large-scale experiment to investigate the performance of seawalls and submerged breakwaters against tsunami overflows by measuring the pressures and forces on the series of building arrays at the coasts. Each defensive structure effectively reduced a cross-shore tsunami force and inland flow hydrodynamics at the low water depth cases. The impulsive force on the most seaward side building was reduced by 36% when both seawalls and submerged breakwaters were installed simultaneously. However, the high water depth cases with the submerged breakwater, the impulsive forces on the most seaward building were greater than the baseline cases (absence of countermeasure structure).

Almost every PIANC MarCom report that deals with sea going vessels has a certain table with design vessels in it. As a lot of these tables are written by the specific working group, there are differences between design vessels in many MarCom reports. It is very beneficial if all reports would use the same design vessels such that one can design a harbour mouth, a harbour basin, a mooring configuration with specific bollards, and specific fenders all related to the same design vessel. To resolve this, a first table of design vessels is created and presented in this paper. The table is produced under working group 211 “Fender Design Guidelines” but contains input from other affected working groups. In the development of WG235, PIANC has taken the opportunity to include additional data on wind areas, mooring winch numbers, manifold locations, and the like. To be able to benefit as soon as possible from this table, WG235 will be released separately before the WG211. The intention of MarCom is to regularly update this table in the future to obtain a central shipping list for all reports.

Design of fender systems consists of two distinct steps: selection of an appropriate fender based on berthing energy demands from the berthing vessel and design of the supporting structure based on the reaction force imposed by the fender on the structure. Both steps include load or safety factors to increase the level of safety. The factor applied to the selection of fenders has up until now been referred to as an “abnormal berthing factor,” with relatively vague recommendations for suggested values for use, usually between 1.25 and 2.0. British Standards (BS 6349-4:2014) has recently chosen to refer to this value as an “energy factor” instead of the previously used abnormal berthing factor. Codes and standards for design of most structures are often based on methods involving what is often referred to as load factors, partial load factors, or resistance factors. As an example, Load and Resistance Factor Design (LRFD) in the US applies load factors to the different loads acting on a structure, and resistance factors to the capacities provided by the structural elements. Similarly, the Eurocode, OCDI, and British Standards use the partial factor method where the effect of the characteristic action, which can be a specified load or imposed deflection, multiplied by the load factor must not exceed the design resistance, i.e., characteristic resistance divided by the partial factors for materials. Although their applications are seemingly simple, these methodologies are based on substantial statistical work, including extensive collection of statistical data, a careful analysis of the data, and appropriate selections of safety levels and acceptable probabilities of failure. This paper explores how utilizing statistical data from berthing velocities, fender manufacturer data, and other adjustment factors were used to establish suggested partial energy factors for selection of fenders. This is what previously has been described as the abnormal berthing factor. By utilizing this method, energy factors can be recommended based on several factors, such as anticipated vessel traffic, type of terminal, type of fender system, or whether the analysis is done for new or existing structures. The suggested factors will provide much clearer guidance than what is currently given in the current fender design guidelines from PIANC WG33 and will be the basis for recommendations on energy factors in the upcoming document from WG211.

The subject of this paper is a pier designed for the US Navy on Hood Canal in Washington State. The pier is located on a slope that is expected to experience deep liquefaction and was designed to be capable of resisting downslope flow of the top 60-ft of in situ soil while also resisting significant inertial seismic loads. The design process included significant collaboration with the geotechnical engineer, who performed soil-structure interaction analysis using FLAC software. Because the direction of kinematic loading was so well defined, the pier was designed with different types of seismic-load-resisting systems each in orthogonal direction (i.e., a mixed system). The resulting design utilizes a stiff batter-pile system in the direction of the kinematic loading, paired with a flexible plumb-pile system perpendicular to the direction of kinematic loading. Because the same piles function in both systems, the two are coupled, with the results in one direction affecting the results in the other. This required a sound, first-principles-based analysis, which resulted in unique pile connection details to accommodate the coupling behavior.

This paper discusses a conceptual construction plan and assesses Northeastern port facilities for their suitability for the fabrication, assembly, and deployment of 67 turbines on modular concrete foundations for a hypothetical 1-gigawatt offshore windfarm valued at about $3 billion in the New England or New York Bight Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Call Area. The paper defines site and facility criteria for construction, assembly, and storage of the foundations and turbine marshalling. Existing and planned port facilities that can meet these criteria are identified and different hypothetical supply chain scenarios are discussed for these facilities for concrete fabrication based in either New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, or Connecticut. The paper gives an indication of the scope and scale needed to prepare East Coast ports for offshore wind.

The Town Square and Promenade project, a $36 million world-class redevelopment project built along 2,500 ft of prime waterfront real estate in San Pedro between Berths 74 and 83 at the Port of Los Angeles, was recently completed as the first phase of the redevelopment of the old Ports O’ Call Village. Berth 83 of this project includes two major marine structures, the Museum Landing and Museum Overlook, which use elevated public decks consisting of concrete-framed deck slabs supported on driven piles. This paper presents design features of the structures and foundations as well as construction approaches to address multiple challenges: aesthetic requirements of the developers, soil-structure interaction due to poor soil conditions, and, most importantly, protection of an existing seawall due to additional loads imposed during construction of the Museum Landing and Museum Overlook structures. In addition, creative solutions developed for construction to accommodate mandates and restrictions associated with the pandemic are presented.

Wave loading for extreme events on vertical wall structures have traditionally being computed using the extreme values for water levels and wave heights derived from a single storm event (design storm method). Joint probability method-optimal sampling (JPM-OS) is a modern analysis method traditionally applied for storm surge modeling and uses a probabilistic framework to evaluate a range of possible variations in the storm conditions. Typically, this method is used to compute extremal hydraulic parameters such as water surface elevation or wave height, which can then be used to compute the wave loads (extreme value method). This study further extends and improvise on the use of the JPM-OS methodology to compute the 2% and 1% (50- and 100-year return period) annual exceedance probabilities (AEP) extreme values for hydrostatic and hydrodynamic loading on a vertical wall structure (probabilistic method). Storm surge modeling was conducted to simulate moving hurricane wind fields and generate the forcing conditions for loading analysis. Sensitivity testing was conducted to select a smaller suite of 63 representative storms to model from an available set of 446 synthetic storms used in the FEMA Flood Insurance Study for the project site. Multiple extraction points were placed on either side of each vertical wall structure in the model domain to record the water level and wave condition time series for each simulated storm event. Loading analysis was conducted for each set of extraction points on either side of the wall for every modeled storm event at each 30-min timestep using wave height, wave period, and water level time series from the storm-surge modeling results. The hydrostatic loads were derived from the head difference across the wall, while wave loads were computed using the Goda formulation for wave forces on a vertical wall. Extreme value analysis for the loads was performed by using Version 1.1 of FEMA’s SURGE_STAT program, which uses the maximum concurrent load and recurrence rates for each simulated storm. Using this software, the 1% and 2% AEP loads were determined at each extraction point. The results showed that the extreme value method, though common, is often over-conservative as it is unlikely that the extreme water level, wave height, and corresponding low water on the backside of the wall would occur concurrently. The design storm method is not able to capture the spatial variability of extreme conditions that may occur due to different storms (tracks and intensities) at different locations in the modeling domain as it uses a single storm event for analysis. This approach showed high variability in loads, with some storms showing higher than the probabilistic method loads, while others showed lower estimates. The advantage of using the probabilistic method for computing loads is that it considers the probabilistic nature of the storm events and therefore eliminates the over-conservatism of the extreme value method approach and the bias resulting from a design storm method approach.

Tsunamis are commonly triggered by large earthquakes along the subduction zone. The public safety risk has been mitigated by warning and evacuation planning. However, community resilience needs essential and critical structures to be structurally resistant to hazards. The ASCE/Structural Engineering Institute (ASCE/SEI) Committee has developed the new ASCE 7 tsunami loads and effects provisions. This research uses ASCE 7 provisions to evaluate the structural reliability of the critical and essential infrastructure at risk of tsunami hazards. A new structural reliability approach was developed that combines structural analysis with reliability analysis to determine the failure probability using the first-order reliability method (FORM). Adaptive pushover analysis was performed to specify structural limit states in material strain threshold values. Fragility analysis was conducted using nonlinear tsunami static and dynamic time-history analyses. Fragility curves were numerically constructed using nonlinear regression analysis for various damage states with gradually rising flood depths. The result demonstrates that expected reliabilities for tsunami hydrodynamic loads fulfill the general objective of the ASCE 7 standard. They might be used in conjunction with a probabilistic risk assessment methodology to analyze the vulnerability of typical seaport structures exposed to tsunami hazards and the United States coastal areas and other locations with similar facilities worldwide.

ASCE/COPRI 61-14 Seismic Design of Piers and Wharves is a consensus-based standard that specifies provisions for the seismic design of new pile-supported piers and wharves. In its current form, however, the document is not intended for the seismic assessment or retrofit of existing piers and wharves. It includes design provisions intended to be beneficial for adequate seismic performance of a pier/wharf structure, such as ductile detailing, compliance with capacity protection principles, structural continuity, and use of materials of a certain quality. The problem is that many existing piers and wharves have been either underdesigned or were constructed without compliance with current seismic provisions. These structures are, in most cases, handicapped, possess unfavorable characteristics, or their components may have degraded due to material deterioration, mechanical damage, or were affected in previous earthquakes. Hence, applying ASCE/COPRI 61 provisions for seismic retrofit of existing structures requires careful thought. The proposed methodology presented here aims at evaluating and seismically retrofitting the structural system of a pier or wharf following ASCE/COPRI 61 as much as possible. The process starts with identifying seismic deficiencies in the structure as part of a detailed evaluation process, including the gathering of as-built information for the structure, the definition of site seismic hazards, and the intended use of the structure and target performance level after the retrofit. For evaluation purposes, the methodology includes using fragility functions to estimate different levels of damage for increasing levels of deformation. As far as seismic retrofit goes, a key component of the process is the selection of a target seismic retrofit objective with corresponding target structural performance levels (minimal damage, controlled and repairable damage, and life safety protection) for both the structure elements, including acceptance criteria for the members, after conducting nonlinear static pushover analysis with due account of soil-structure interaction and definition of strength, stiffness, and deformation capacity of both the original and the retrofitted structure. The paper does not focus on specific mitigation/seismic remediation procedures but rather on describing the proposed seismic evaluation and retrofit methodology.

Seismic provisions in ASCE/COPRI 61-14 for the design and detailing of pile-supported piers and wharves are based on displacement-based principles, with target strain limits for the piles that depend on the type of pile and pile-to-deck connections. Most of the provisions have evolved from bridge design practice because of their similar “horizontal” construction nature. The seismic design and detailing of piers and wharves aims at providing adequate strength and deformation capacity of the piles while complying with capacity protection principles for the deck and the pile-to-deck connections following the so-called “strong beam-weak column” design approach. Most of the analysis and design provisions for piles in ASCE/COPRI 61-14 are based on the Port of Los Angeles (2010) and Port of Long Beach (2012) seismic design codes, and MOTEMS (2013), which focus on marine construction practice in California, namely prestressed concrete piles supporting a cast-in-place concrete flat plate (slab). Provisions for the design and detailing of pile-to-deck connections have evolved from AASHTO LRFD (2011). After almost a decade of use of ASCE 61, new experimental evidence, particularly on steel pipe piles and bridge piers, as well as the increased use of precast concrete elements for staged construction of concrete decks in piers and wharves, has raised the need to update, clarify, and even revise some of the provisions for the design of piles and pile-to-deck connections reported in Chapter 7 (“Design and Detailing Considerations”) of ASCE 61, as well as the introduction of new design procedures. This paper highlights revisions being proposed for ASCE 61-22 for the design and detailing of piles and pile-deck connections, including the use of target rotation limits (rather than strain limits) for steel pipe piles and prestressed concrete piles embedded in a concrete deck; enhancement of provisions for the design of steel pile connections involving concrete plugs, including the effect plugs have on the capacity protection design of concrete decks; a critique of the adequacy of connections involving steel pipe piles welded to steel embeds or steel pile caps in seismic regions; revisiting strain limits for steel pipe piles to address concerns against premature local buckling; and the enhancement of code provisions for the design of pile-to-deck joints and connections, with emphasis in staged deck construction using pile caps.

During a tsunami or storm surge event, coastal infrastructure and ports are subject to a series of disparate physical hazards that can cause significant damage and loss of life. Among these, debris impact loading during inundation events is chaotic, complex, and thus far minimally understood, especially when considering the accumulation of individual debris into a large debris field. This work provides the results of a comprehensive experimental study of the impact and subsequent damming of chaotic debris fields, including more than 400 individual trials; this scope of this paper describes the experimental design and initial analysis of wave-driven debris-induced loading for select configurations. These data include both the impact phenomena and subsequent damming by debris accumulation and find strong correlation between increasing debris field density and high impact forces. High frequency impact forces and low frequency damming signals are considered via fast Fourier transform methods. Overall trends in wave-induced debris forcing from large debris fields are presented.

The King Salman International Ship Repair and Building Complex, located in Ras Al-Khair, Saudi Arabia, and covering 12 million m², is currently under construction and will be the largest shipyard complex in the world once constructed. The overall project consists of design and construction of three fully equipped dry docks, three piers, and more than a hundred buildings and facilities. The dry docks are constructed in dry within two large temporary construction pits with temporary seepage cutoff walls constructed at pit perimeters. The dock floors were designed to be fully water-pressure-relieved with a sub-floor drainage system provided to prevent the buildup of ground water pressure under the floors. Permanent seepage cutoff walls were designed to limit the amount of water reaching the sub-floor drainage system. This paper provides an overall review of the project and design details of the seepage cutoff walls. Some construction challenges are also discussed in the paper.

With the preparation and development of PIANC WG 211, it is evident that clear design recommendations for vessel berthing velocities need to be derived, since this is one of the most critical parameters in fender-system design. This paper discusses recommendations on how to determine the characteristic berthing velocities for the design of fenders systems, with and without the use of field observations. Furthermore, the proposed characteristic berthing velocities have been compared with the guidelines of PIANC WG 33, PIANC WG 145, the German EAU 2012, and the Spanish ROM. Based on the findings of these investigations, some historically embedded hypotheses will need to be reconsidered. The key findings of this study are considered useful for the design of fender systems for new berthing facilities and for the assessment of existing marine structures.

Floating structures, including barges, pontoons, docks, wave attenuators, and ferry landings, are commonly held in place laterally through use of anchor piles embedded into underlying soils. These anchor piles and their connections to the floating structures present unique design challenges and are unforgiving if designed or installed incorrectly. Furthermore, there is limited guidance publicly available for design of these specialized elements. Projects evaluated include NYC Harbor ferry landing barges, concrete wave attenuators, and aluminum docks secured with individual steel pipe piles, as well as the large-scale Battery Park City floating ferry terminal and trussed jacket anchoring system. Consistent themes explored through the case studies are the need to define and liberally accommodate expected movements as well as address steel pipe pile and connection fatigue. This paper discusses best practices and recommendations for floating structure anchor pile design. The best practices and their importance will be demonstrated through successful case studies as well as evaluation of instances of premature failure.

Fenders are key asset to ports and maritime structures to accommodate vessels, absorbing berthing energy without inducing excessive loads onto structures. A great sum of money is spent on the construction of maritime infrastructure globally; therefore the pressure to further reduce costs of marine fenders with cheaper alternatives has led to a worrying number of low-quality fenders and fender designs being supplied across the industry. PIANC Guidelines for the Design of Fender Systems: 2002 Working Group 33 (WG33) is the current accepted industry guideline for the design and testing of marine fender systems. The maritime industry has progressed a long way in design development of fenders, in the intervening period of almost two decades; consequently PIANC has established WG122 to revise and update this document. It is therefore important to review the testing recommendation in the present guideline and highlight areas where improvements in fender testing could be made so that future guidelines can be improved with the aim of achieving: (1) Maintain a standard quality assurance throughout the fendering industry; (2) Ensure materials used to manufacture fenders are durable and of high standards; (3) Fender performance design correction factors are established based on a standard procedure that does not leave room for interpretation; (4) Performance verification for fenders in service; and (5) “Type approval” certificates are issued by 3rd party witness agencies using a well defined testing protocol.

Cyclic water level variations and resulting large wave action, ice loading, and coastal processes have deteriorated and undermined the two seawalls built in the early 70s to better protect a historic site in Lake Erie. The main objective of this project was to repair and restore 579 m of north and 457 m of south seawalls. A hybrid numerical modeling approach was developed to determine wave overtopping rates using a Reynold Averaged Navier Stokes-Volume Of Fluid (RANS-VOF) model (Mongoose), including reflection characteristics of existing and proposed structures in combination with a spectral wave model, which in turn was used to assess the impact on neighboring properties due to raising of the seawalls. A semi-empirical wave overtopping equation was derived as a function of relative freeboard R_c/H_m0. The model results revealed that the proposed structure did not create adverse impact on the neighboring shorelines.

This paper provides a case study involving the waterfront redevelopment of a decommissioned US Navy facility with a 1940s wharf repurposed as a pedestrian promenade. The conversion to a publicly-accessible structure triggered special seismic performance criteria and the application of multiple seismic standards from different regulators. The seismic design had to address strong ground motions, weak marine soils and large ground deformations, aging infrastructure, deep soil mixing (DSM) ground improvements, and late major project changes requiring reconsideration of the kinematic inertial (K+I) load combinations on the pile-supported wharf. The design team changed from a conservative 100%/100% combination to an approach considering the time history analysis results from the DSM design analyses, using relative phasing of the kinematic and inertial responses to generate K+I combinations for the governing load cases. This paper describes the basis and details for the final approach.

The use of reinforcing plates welded to steel pile bulkhead walls to strengthen the piles is a technique that has been used for several decades. Reinforcing plates can be used to strengthen both steel sheet piles as well as pipe or H-section king piles in combi-walls. Although the use of such reinforcing plates to increase bulkhead wall capacity is similar to the use of flange or cover plates to strengthen bridge girders, there are certain nuances when it comes to marine bulkhead applications that make the situation subtlety different and for which little test or analysis data is available. As such, the authors studied a pipe pile/sheet pile combi-wall configuration and completed a finite element analysis (FEA) to demonstrate that welding plate-reinforcement to pipe king piles is an effective means of increasing the quay wall’s bending capacity in lieu of increasing the king pile’s diameter and/or wall thickness.

Cantilever and anchored sheet pile bulkheads are routinely used for retaining the backfills and excavations in marine engineering. Furthermore, as the global economy becomes increasingly integrated, the necessity for larger container vessels and port capacity rises. The sheet pile walls are critical to enabling the construction of modern facilities necessary to attract these ships that are vital to the economic health of the ports to allow the harbor bed to be dredged to depths required by modern vessels or support the upland. However, many sheet piles fail due to high stress and/or loss of long-term serviceability. An appropriate analysis and design method and proper understanding of sheet pile walls’ behavior can prevent the occurrence of such failures significantly. In this paper, first, several case studies of sheet pile wall failures collected from the inspections at the ports and other marine structures are presented, and probable causes are discussed and evaluated using lateral load analysis. Next, both embedment depth to ensure the stability and maximum bending moments are predicted based on three different methods: finite element, P-Y model, and limit equilibrium method (LEM). These three methods are widely used in the marine industry for analyzing sheet piles, and several software has been developed in the past based on the aforementioned methodologies. Results suggest that identifying the possible failure of the sheet pile walls is critical in the design. Also, results indicate that sheet pile response predictions based on the P-Y model and finite element methods are greater than the corresponding values from the LEM, depending on the soil parameters, sheet pile stiffness, and anchorage condition. The location of the fixity obtained from both finite element and the P-Y methods was found to be consistent. Some increase in bending moments and embedment obtained by the LEM may therefore be warranted depending on the wall boundary conditions and soil parameters. Furthermore, it was found that many sheet pile wall failures can be attributed to improper analysis methodology and/or overlooked design details and the site condition.

This paper presents the analysis and design approach used to evaluate the soil liquefaction and incorporate the liquefaction induced bi-directional kinematic loads in the design of a tandem lateral system for a pier structure located in an area with multiple slopes ranges from 60 to 80 ft high. The tandem lateral system, including a plumb-pile force resisting system perpendicular to the direction of soil flow paired with a batter pile force resistance system in the direction of the soil flow load, is developed to resist the bi-directional lateral spreading loads, which are estimated through a novel approach combining soil liquefaction analysis and numerical modeling with FLAC to realistically estimate the slope deformations and the associated kinematic loads. Details of the numerical modeling approach that include soil-pile interaction springs’ calibration and the effective stress analysis performed using the PM4Sand soil model will be discussed in the paper. The design approach also requires close collaboration between the structural and geotechnical engineers, which is key for success of this project.

Pile-supported foundations subjected to large ground deformation and superstructure inertia can deform excessively during strong earthquake shaking. Design guidelines vary on the combination of inertia and kinematics in uncoupled analyses and do not consider the effects of varying soil profiles and structural properties in their recommendations. This study investigates the relative contribution of inertial and kinematic loadings on the overall wharf response during the critical loading cycle as well as the factors that affect this interaction. This was achieved by analyzing experimental data from five large centrifuge tests on pile supported wharves in liquefied soils. Nonlinear dynamic models were calibrated to the centrifuge data and were subjected to different loading scenarios to evaluate the isolated contribution of inertia and kinematic demands. The analysis results provide recommendations for the design of pile-supported wharves subjected to foundation deformation. The similarities and differences of inertial and kinematic interaction between wharf supported by small-diameter flexible piles and bridge foundation supported by stiff shafts with a large-diameter are discussed which provided insight on the applicability of bridge design guidelines to wharf structures.

This paper enumerates the research, codes, methods, means, analyses, and testing used in successful detailed structural conditions assessment and monitoring of a partially relieved dry dock in an undisclosed location built in 1960s to carry higher loads of modern ships than that were envisioned in its original design. Strategies for successful concrete coring, testing of cores, and results of petrographic evaluations are briefly discussed. The paper presents how to derive lateral earth and pore pressures for a relieved system under operational and design extreme flood using flow nets, and benchmarking those analyses against observed performance during historical storm events. The 3-D and 2-D finite element models used for the assessments are described. The complexities and the innovative methods and materials used for installation of piezometers for permanent groundwater pressure monitoring are described. Groundwater monitoring, displacement monitoring, and their evaluations are also presented briefly. The paper also discusses the pitfalls of conventional analyses, and common mistakes made by structural engineers and finite element analysts.

To accommodate increasing vessel sizes and improve current throughput, the Port of Hueneme (Port) increased depth at Wharf 1, Berths 1 and 2 while maintaining the current seismic performance of the wharf and slope by installing a submerged retaining wall at the toe of the slope (toe wall). The installation of the toe wall required removing and rebuilding the fender system. The Port took this opportunity to also double the capacity of mooring fixtures and repair the concrete infrastructure, achieving two berths ready to accommodate larger vessels from a depth, berthing, and mooring perspective. This paper will describe the challenges of designing the toe wall, fendering, mooring fixtures, and miscellaneous repairs. It will also highlight the installation challenges that were overcome during the construction such as unique techniques discovered for the installation of composite fender piles in granular soils and dealing with significant sheet pile obstructions.

Large shiploaders that transfer bulk materials are one of the most critical components of a bulk materials handling port. Any disruption in a shiploader service can cause major interruptions in port operations. The design of shiploaders is covered in a few mobile and semi-mobile equipment standards that are limited in scope and clarity regarding seismic design. To compensate for the limited scope of the mobile and semi-mobile equipment standards, design engineers revert to building codes that are created for human-occupied spaces. Building codes are not suitable for the seismic design of shiploaders as they ignore the shiploaders’ ability to move and rotate. Applying the seismic design rules of building codes to shiploaders will result in a significant uncertainty. In this paper, a case study is presented to highlight the importance of performance-based seismic design for shiploaders. The analysis and design approach that implemented the use of seismic structural fuses to control the structural response to earthquakes are explained. The need for integrating the superstructure with the foundations to simulate the soil-structure interaction is highlighted. The study concluded that the proper modelling of certain mechanical components is essential to simulate their true behaviour during an earthquake.

Dry Dock No. 1 was built at Naval Base San Diego in 1942 during WWII with a configuration to meet the requirements of the naval fleet of that time. The navy has gone through many fleet upgrades since the construction of the dry dock while the dry dock has remained largely the same for the past 80 years. Recognizing the current limitations of the dry dock operations, the navy identified several upgrades to modernize the dry dock to meet current and future demands and prolong its service life. This paper will address the design and construction of structural, mechanical, and electrical upgrades at Dry Dock No. 1, including layout and design of the trolley based in-haul system; a micro pile supported sonar dome pit; replacement of 800-HP, 150-HP, and 20-HP pumps; and electrical upgrades.

The US Coast Guard, Civil Engineering Unit Cleveland (USCG) and the US Army Corps of Engineers, Buffalo District (USACE-LRB) have partnered to investigate the existing wave conditions and optimize structural solutions to attenuate waves at the USCG Sector Buffalo, New York, boat basin. To better understand the wave conditions in the USCG Buffalo boat basin, three wave gages were deployed by USACE Engineering Research and Development Center (ERDC) from November–December 2020. The wave gage data was used to calibrate a numerical 2-D wave model, FUNWAVE-TVD. FUNWAVE-TVD is the total variation diminishing (TVD) version of the fully nonlinear Boussinesq wave model (FUNWAVE). Gage results indicated the occurrence of harbor resonance and significant wave reflection within the boat basin. Slotted vertical wall structures offset from the existing basin walls were proposed by USACE due to the space limitations within the boat basin. Results of the study will provide a tentatively selected wave attenuation structural alternative, to be constructed in a future USCG project.

Water injection dredging (WID) is an innovative hydrodynamic dredging technique that is cost-effective, low-impact, and environmentally sound. The WID injects large volumes of water at low pressure into the sediment layer, and the resulting fluidized sediment is then carried horizontally along the waterway as a density current, keeping the sediment in the system and eliminating the need for a disposal site. This paper provides an overview of the WID theory of operation by describing the vessel, its components, density current dynamics, and site feasibility based on geotechnical characteristics of shoal material. Additionally, the paper summarizes the research performed on the dredging operation, density current dynamics, and the short-term fate of the dredged sediments during WID operations at Wilmington Harbor, NC, in January 2022. The findings are that the WID dredging method is operationally efficient and well-tailored to local hydrodynamics to maintain the harbor in an environmentally sustainable manner.

Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas toward the end of August 2017 and inflicted over $100 billion in damage primarily due to rainfall triggered flooding and storm surge. The United States Coast Guard (USCG) Station Port Aransas was one of many coastal facilities that was heavily damaged by the storm. The USCG Station consisted of a station building and berthing basin for several types of USCG boats. The station building was catastrophically damaged and eventually torn down leaving the USCG to work out of mobile office trailers. Additionally, the boat house covering two boat berths at the waterfront collapsed during the storm. Furthermore, flowing water and debris damaged some components of the existing waterfront infrastructure. A design-build project was awarded in April 2020 to provide a new station building, rebuild a new boat house, rehabilitate the existing bulkhead, rebuild a pier, and provide a boat ramp.

The cruise ships serving the competitive cruise industry have steadily grown in size to keep up with the booming demand for passengers and onboard amenities. An increase in vessels’ dimensions, including overhanging life vessels and balconies, has led to expanded demand for mooring elements, operations, and services at cruise berths and terminals. In 2019, Carnival Cruise Line successfully upgraded the Long Beach Cruise Terminal for the arrival of their new ship, Carnival Panorama. This paper examines the careful planning, scheduling, construction phasing, and design challenges faced to perform upgrades to an existing wharf of this active cruise terminal to safely accommodate this larger class cruise ship.

Large ships, particularly those with large windage areas such as cruise and container ships, have made the estimation of wind loads a critical aspect in the design of their mooring facilities. Wind loads on ships at berth are typically estimated for the ship alone and with empirically derived load coefficients. This could lead to under design and situations of mooring system failure and accidents. The use of CFD constitutes a significant advancement that can overcome the deficiencies of simplified methods. A CFD model of a fully loaded 9,000+ TEU Post-Panamax container ship was developed using a cylindrical 2,000 m radius, 500 m high domain, and validated against published wind tunnel and CFD data. Simulations performed for the ship and a closed quay, and ship, a closed quay, and a container yard showed that these features can lead to significant differences over loads predicted for the ship alone.

Ports increasingly have ageing bulkhead walls supporting waterfront facilities. At the Port of Lake Charles, Berth 9 supports a transit shed for storage of palleted, bagged rice. The existing bulkhead wall had a failed tieback system with significant section loss of the steel sheets. Conventional repair or replacement would have been expensive and disruptive to cargo operations, requiring significant demolition and removal of the shed roof. An innovative repair was installed consisting of 24-in.-diameter helical piles providing lateral and axial support for a new concrete wall installed in front of the existing wall. This repair reduced demolition of the shed slab and kept the shed roof intact to maintain dry storage operations during construction. By completing this project, the service life of the terminal was extended, thereby deferring investment in a full wharf and shed reconstruction project. This paper describes the design, procurement, and construction challenges.

Corrosion deterioration of port infrastructure is a major challenge that results in expensive repairs and downtime of port facilities. Implementing corrosion mitigation and prevention to port infrastructure can save significant time and money while reducing crucial infrastructure downtime. This paper will discuss what corrosion management strategies can be implemented on port infrastructure. Implementing best management practices like more corrosion resistant designs, proper coating maintenance, and cathodic protection can improve port infrastructure durability and reduce the cost of maintenance over the long term. Preserving infrastructure not only has a financial impact, but it also has a positive environmental impact through the reduction of new construction materials and demolition waste. The paper will discuss the different types of corrosion mitigation strategies and how they are implemented on various port infrastructure. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each method, and what kind of service life can a port expect from these strategies?

Long Beach Container Terminal at the Port of Long Beach is the first fully automated container terminal in the United States, and one of the most advanced container terminals in the world. Design and construction of the terminal has taken more than a decade, and the terminal will be fully operational by 2022. The terminal can accommodate three 14,000 TEU or two 24,000 TEU vessels simultaneously, with an annual cargo handling capacity of 3.3 million TEU. In addition, the automated terminal can reduce air pollution by as much as 50% compared to a traditional container terminal. Considerable challenges were faced during design and construction of the terminal, including automated stacking cranes’ rail movements; asphalt concrete pavement requirements to withstand automated guided vehicle traffic; removal of an existing underground quay wall; and fill wick drains, surcharge, and land settlement. This paper presents the challenges faced and the valuable lessons learned in constructing a state-of-the-art container terminal.

In current practice for US West Pacific region, the seismic design of wharf structures is often based on the performance-based design requirements prescribed in ASCE/COPRI 61-14. The piles for these structures are designed to develop pile-to-deck and in-ground plastic hinges in an extreme seismic event. In the past decade, steel piles have become a preferred option in the marine industry, specifically for marine oil terminal projects. In the development of the next ASCE/COPRI 61 edition, the steel pipe piles in-ground strain limits prescribed in ASCE/COPRI 61-14 have been questioned by the ASCE/COPRI 61 task working group. Recent research concludes steel pipe piles are susceptible to local buckling and fracture at lower strains than the current limits prescribed in ASCE/COPRI 61-14. This paper describes the ongoing research funded by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center being performed at the University of California, San Diego, by the authors of this paper.

This paper describes a series of innovative applications of concrete bulkheads and concrete wall-type elements in marine terminal projects. The successful implementation of concrete bulkhead and concrete wall-type solutions in marine projects relies heavily on adequate characterization of site conditions, proper modeling of the soil-structure interaction, and the definition of boundary and loading conditions. Provisions for the analysis and design of concrete bulkheads in the United States are scarce, usually extrapolated from steel bulkhead design guidelines, which may lead to voids on specific technical matters, including the modeling of soil-structure interaction and the design to address flexure and shear force demands on the bulkhead and wall-type structures. The goal of this paper is to fill in this gap by listing a series of recommendations related to key aspects of analysis, design, and construction of concrete bulkheads and concrete wall-type elements based on their successful application in marine terminal projects worldwide.

This paper discusses the engineering challenges and constraints encountered during the modernization of a submarine berth that was originally constructed over 100 years ago, to increase the number of contemporary vessels that could be berthed at the same time. Additionally, this paper describes the history of the facility, the engineering studies, and innovative solutions developed to extend its service life, as well as the proactive measures taken by Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC) to maintain efficient shipyard operations aligned with the goals of the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program (SIOP).

The United States Navy (USN, Navy) maintains a large inventory of waterfront structures (e.g., piers, wharves, bulkheads, and moorings) spanning the globe. Their uses range from general berthing to mission specific operations. All require consideration of design requirements vs. operations. Significant costs are involved in construction and rehabilitation of piers. Design and operational requirements are constantly evolving. Parameters influencing pier design include code requirements, construction methodology, materials, site constraints, environmental conditions, vessel types, berthing operations, mission, and facility operations. General building codes do not broadly apply to waterfront structures because there are many unique requirements, conditions, constraints, and no uniform US pier design code. Because of the wide variety of considerations, pier design involves a regular give-and-take process. This paper explores pier design and code requirements vs. operations (from a US Navy perspective).

This paper describes the unique challenges of reinforcing a pier to withstand large environmental forces in a remote and unforgiving environment and how good engineering decisions were made with incomplete data to design a buildable solution that could be implemented with limited materials in a limited weather window. Project engineering includes ROV inspections, wave modeling, structural analysis, innovative design, and partnering through a design-build contract.

The existing State Pier in New London, CT, is being improved for staging, marshaling, and storage of offshore wind components. Site conditions and structural loading demand imposed unique geotechnical challenges. One geotechnical challenge involved potential reuse and long-term settlement remediation of the organic dredge spoil using ground improvement. An alternative approach involved using borrowed granular material and disposal of the dredge spoil off-site. A second challenge involved foundation treatment for the large diameter, heavily loaded “spudcans” supporting jack-up vessels for load-in and out. Alternatives considered included removal of the organic soil and replacing with a thick stone pad, ground improvement, and pile foundations. This paper provides insights into the challenges in port developments, where soft marine deposits and heavy structural loading often co-exist. Early engagement among the owner, developer, design team, and construction administration team were crucial. A collaborative geotechnical peer review approach was utilized and proved to be effective.

The Trident Wharf is located in the Port Canaveral in Cape Canaveral in the area known as the Space Coast. The wharf was constructed between 1975 and 1977 and required a major rehabilitation effort in order to continue operations. A critical aspect of the repair involved the strengthening of the prestressed precast concrete deck planks with carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRP). The use of CFRP was complicated by the fact that the existing corrosion and related concrete repairs created a potentially unreliable load path and required the consideration of mechanical anchorage. This paper will review the technical details and supporting structural testing related to anchoring composite laminates using composite anchors, while also emphasizing the required specification wording needed to qualify the design and the details that are not covered in the existing fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) codes or guidelines.

As part of the improvement and modernization of the Paul W. Conley Container Terminal (Conley Terminal) in South Boston, Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport) rehabilitated existing container ship Berth 11. The existing berth has been in use since World War II and has undergone a series of modifications and improvements over the years. The original design draft for the facility was −40 ft mean low water (MLW). In the early 1980s, the berth was retrofitted with a concrete deck. As part of this retrofit, high-capacity concrete crane beams supported by steel piles were added to support low-profile ship-to-shore container cranes. In 2000, bracing was installed on the outshore crane beam piles to allow dredging down to −45 ft MLW. The project that is the subject of this presentation rehabilitated and improved the berth again in 2018/2019 to allow further deepening to −50 ft mean lower low water (MLLW). The latest upgrades allowed for dredging of the ship berth to a depth 12 ft deeper than the berth’s original design, a strengthened deck to restore and improve deck capacity, stronger bollards for larger vessel mooring, and a larger fender system to safely allow larger vessels to dock. The upgrades to the berth were significant, and all had to be performed while maintaining ship operations and container handling. Shutting down or limiting operations on the berth was not an option. This unique challenge resulted in a collaborative effort with terminal operations, the contractor, and the engineer to maintain full operation of the facility while successfully completing the necessary berth improvements. This collaborative approach resulted in a successful project that finished ahead of schedule and under budget.

Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (PNS) is tasked with the overhaul, repair, and modernization of the US Navy’s fleet of fast attack submarines. At Dry Dock 1, PNS is challenged with executing this mission in an 80-year-old graving dock, originally built for submarines drawing half the water as today’s modern submarines. To support these availabilities, PNS would install artificial buoyancy to facilitate submarine docking and undocking—a system that was inefficient and high-risk. In 2017, the Navy endeavored to upgrade and modernize this facility through the design and construction of a first-in-class super flood basin in front of Dry Dock 1. This $160-million contract, known as MILCON P310 Dry Dock 1 Super Flood Basin, installed a lock-style system to artificially raise the water level above the adjacent river so that submarines can transit into and out of the dock without additional buoyancy. Challenged by site constraints, construction tolerances, and project schedule, the idea of the “entrance structure” was born—a pre-cast concrete seat and sill, floated into position and lowered onto a prepared foundation. This U-shaped entrance structure measures 110-ft long, 60-ft wide, by 60-ft tall, and was designed to be fabricated offsite, towed/floated into position, and lowered onto a deep foundation. The design, construction, and installation of the entrance structure represent a creative solution to challenging site constraints utilizing conventional construction techniques scaled to an unconventional size.

Properly surveying, inventorying, inspecting, and documenting waterfront facilities can be costly, time-consuming, and require high-risk activities with significant safety measures. Recent advancements in both light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and sound navigation and ranging (sonar) technologies allow for the collection and processing of three-dimensional survey data and structural modeling with unprecedented speed and accuracy. While LiDAR is increasingly common in creating building as-builts, site layout, and mapping, this technology is now aimed at the water’s edge and married to underwater sonar. This paper outlines the technologies, collection process, and deliverables for a rapid waterfront survey and enhanced inspection using light and sound.