Ship strikes on waterways
Analysis of ship and vessel impacts on bridge supports

Few studies have been carried out on the impact of ships on waterways (figure 1 ). However, the forces transmitted to a quay wall during ship berthing are the subject of more or less empirical rules, but they cannot be transposed to the case of bridge piers, because the circumstances are not the same. When docking, the ship presents itself "from the side" with a low speed, of the order of 0.2 to 0.3 m/s perpendicular to the quay wall. What's more, the structure of a seagoing vessel is quite different from that of an inland waterway vessel.