Experimental study on the behavior of precast segmental piers under ship impact loading

This paper is to study the difference of anti-collision performance between precast segmental piers and conventional monolithic reinforced concrete (RC) piers. A reduced scale model was used, and the dynamic responses of piers with different structures under impact were compared and analyzed. The nonlinear finite element (FE) model of pier impact was established and numerical simulation of the impact responses and the failure mode of piers was carried out. The research results indicated that under impact, the failure mode of monolithic pier is tension bending failure, and for the segmental piers, the shear slip and concrete crushing in the impact segment occur mainly. The test results also indicated that the segmental piers are more flexible than monolithic piers, which leads to the peak impact force of the segmental pier reduced by 21.25% and 6.55%, respectively, under the impact of rigid head and ship bow compared to that on the monolithic pier. The study also found that segmented piers have better deformation capability and less residual displacement, but fail to show good self-reset capability. The results of FE calculation match well with the test results, which verifies the applicability and reliability of the FE model used in this paper.