Pendulum impact test of reinforced concrete structure

Abstract

Floating offshore concrete structures are vulnerable to collisions with ships, and the likelihood of accidents increase with increasing numbers of structures. Current design codes are not accurate for impact short duration impact loads, as they do not account for rate dependent behaviour of concrete and reinforcement. In order to quantify impact loads, experimental testing and numerical simulations are performed. In this thesis, results from a pendulum impact test and numerical simulations are presented. A reinforced concrete wall was built based on the design of the foundation for a floating offshore wind turbine, and tested with repeated pendulum impacts. Impact force, displacements, axial strain along reinforcement and damage was measured and analyzed. After the testing, a numerical model was developed to simulate the testing, and the accuracy of the model is checked against the experimental results. The effects of different mass, impact energy and impact height was investigated.