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Failure of Semi-infinite Beams of Variable Thickness and Curvature on Elastic Foundation under Contact Loading



Author(s)

João Batista De Aguiar1 and José Manoel De Aguiar2

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DOI:10.17265/1934-7359/2013.02.007

1. Department of Engenharia AeroEspacial,Universidade Federal do ABC, Santo André 09210-170, Brazil
2. Department of Ensino Geral, Faculdade de Tecnología de São Paulo, São Paulo 01124-060, Brazil

In early winter it is usual, in cold regions, that ice features approach offshore structures, like offshore platforms, impacting them, in a slow process of constant deformation build up. Interaction follows, in many cases, up to the point where ice-failure caused by bending fracture takes place. This supposes very large contact forces that the structure has to resist. Therefore, quantification of these efforts is of vital importance to the structural design of platforms. In several designs, these platforms are constructed with inclined walls so as to cause ice to fail in a flex-compression mode. In such a case the ice feature is analyzed as a beam constituted of a linear elastic material in brittle state with constant ice thickness. The simplification renders the problem solvable in a close form. However, this hypothesis goes against field observations. Marine currents action, wind and the sequence of contacts among features lead to thickness variations. Here this factor is addressed in the construction of a model, for harmonic forms of variation of thickness profile, and the accompanying curvature variations, whose solution determines field variables used to address the failure question. Due to the deformation dependency of the loading, a numerical scheme for the two-point boundary value problem in the semi-infinite space is developed. Failure pressures are computed based on a Rankine locus of failure. Variations of the order of 20% in the failure loads, as compared to the uniform beam model, are observed.

Ice beams, thickness variation, elastic behavior, frictional contact, bending, failure loads.