Study on the Influence of Fluid Fields on the Impact Force of Ships Colliding with Bridges

This study employs a fluid–structure interaction (FSI) collision-modeling approach to investigate the hydrodynamic effects on impact forces during collisions involving ships and bridges. The influences of the collision speed, the mass of the ship, and the water-flow velocity on the impact force are investigated. The constant added-mass (CAM) method is a widely employed technique in relevant studies to account for water influence due to its efficiency in conserving computational resources and reducing analysis time. This method is also employed in numerical simulations for comparative analysis. The impact force and dynamical response of a container ship using the FSI and CAM methods are investigated to determine whether the CAM method is suitable for considering the influence of the water surrounding the ship. The impact forces assessed by numerical simulations are also compared with the existing formulae. It is found that the water flow significantly affects the collision force, which must be taken into account in high-energy collision situations.