Numerical simulations of the drifting ice sheets collision with the bridge pier

The drifting ice sheets impact with the bridge pier and other hydraulic structures in the rivers, which may damage even cause collapse of the structures. In this paper, the FEM software package LS-DYNA was used to performed the numerical simulations of the collision process of the ice sheets and the bridge piers to make clear the interaction between them and to understand the failure mechanism of the ice sheet. The elastic strain-stress model with von mises failure criterion was used to describe the ice material. The brittle damage material model was used to describe the concrete pier. Three types thickness of ice sheets were performed at various velocity of the ice sheet respectively. The impact process of every case were displayed and the time history curve of the collision force were given out. The simulations results show that the peak value of the collision force time history curve increases with the velocity of the sheet firstly and then decreases with the velocity of the ice sheet. There is one critical velocity which relate to the compressive strength of the ice sheet. The simulation result were also compared with the different bridge design code, which show that the code result is more conservative in bridge design.