Behaviors of a Very Large Floating Structure Supported With Dolphins Under Earthquake Loading: The Second Report — In Cases of Actual Earthquake Wave and Existence of Gaps Between Fenders and Dolphins

In recent years, tremendous research efforts have been directed toward developing very large floating structures (VLFSs) for the purposes of airports, terminals etc. on the sea to utilize ocean space. There is a VLFS which has a pontoon type structure supported with many dolphins and it is important to investigate sufficiently the behaviors of such VLFS under earthquake loading, because large reaction forces will be exerted on the dolphins and fenders that connect the dolphins and the floating structure. The preceding paper reported the behaviors of the floating structure, fenders and dolphins obtained from the time history response analyses of the structure with varying the period and velocity of the sinusoidal earthquake wave, when the horizontal rigidity of the floating structure was elastic and rigid and when the gaps between the fenders and dolphins were assumed to be zero. This paper reports, succeeding to the preceding paper, the results of the time history response analyses of a VLFS supported with 49 dolphins with varying the period and velocity of the applied actual earthquake wave in both cases where gaps between the fenders and dolphins are equal to zero and non-zero. In the analyses, the floating structure supported with dolphins is modeled as both a horizontally elastic and rigid plate supported with linear springs and dashpots through gap elements.