A Simplified Procedure to Assess the Strength of a Ship Impacting a Lock Mitered Gate

This paper presents a simplified procedure allowing for a rapid prediction of the strength of a lock mitered gate submitted to a ship impact. In this article, the force opposed to the penetration of the vessel is derived by supposing that the bow is perfectly rigid, so the total initial kinetic energy has to be entirely transformed through an internal dissipation. For a given penetration of the striking vessel, an analytical procedure is followed in order to estimate the amount of energy dissipated by local and global deformations of the impacted structure. An equivalent quasi-static force is then derived. A comparison is made with a finite elements simulation in order to test the analytical procedure.