A SIMPLIFIED PROCEDURE TO ASSESS THE DYNAMIC PRESSURES ON LOCK GATES

The paper is concerned with the seismic design of lock gates. During an earthquake, it is evident that the liquid contained in the lock chamber is responsible for an additional hydrodynamic pressure acting on the structure. This one is known to have three different contributions, which are respectively called the convective, rigid and flexible impulsive parts. The two first ones have already been extensively studied in the literature and are quite easy to evaluate. Nevertheless, characterizing the flexible contribution is more difficult, as it is largely influenced by the coupling occurring between the fluid and the gate. The only relevant way to overcome this difficulty seems to resort to finite elements software, which is not always convenient. Therefore, some research have been undertaken to provide a rapid meshless method leading to an approximation of the flexible pressure on lock gates. As detailed in the present paper, this is achieved by applying an analytical approach based on the virtual work principle. As a matter of validation, the results obtained analytically are compared to numerical solutions. The agreement between both of them is found to be satisfactory.