Numerical analysis of quay walls under high-cyclic loading

Numerical analysis of quay walls under high-cyclic loading. Validated numerical models for predicting long-term deformations of port infrastructure under high-cyclic loading are still limited in availability. In particular, the numerical representation of soil-structure interaction of quay walls subjected to cyclic loading has received little attention to date. This paper presents a methodology and its limitations for the inverse identification of constitutive parameters that are often difficult to determine in practice, as well as for the long-term prediction of cyclically loaded quay walls. Using the Athabaska quay wall as a case study, two-dimensional finite element analyses are performed in PLAXIS. The subsoil is modelled using a hypoplastic constitutive model with intergranular strain and the HCA model. The constitutive parameters are identified inversely by coupling numerical simulations with particle swarm optimisation (PSO). Measured horizontal quay wall displacements from 1996 and 2024 are used for comparison. With R2 = 0.92, the results show very good agreement between the simulations and the measurements. 50-year prognostic analyses show deformations of up to 10.3 cm and a declining deformation rate toward the end of the considered period. Overall, the coupling of numerical simulations with optimisation algorithms provides a transferable approach for the assessment of existing quay walls.

Content

Subjects

cyclic loading

High-Cycle Accumulation (HCA) model

hypoplasticity

inverse parameter identification

quay wall

tidal loading

inverse Parameterbestimmung

HCA

Kaimauer

Hypoplastizität

Zyklik

Tidebeanspruchung; Partikelschwarmoptimierung (PSO)

DDC Class

600: Technology