ABSTRACT
Collisions of ships with bridges crossing navigable inland waterways can injure the load bearing capacity of bridges and become a threat to the bridge users. A deterministic design practice for bridges has been improved towards advanced analysis of the ship bridge collision problem. Ship bridge collisions in German river traffic are very rare events and consequences for the hit bridges are limited to local damages to bridge piers or superstructures. Comparing the economics of a traffic system expressed as the sum of investment costs and external costs the ship/waterway traffic system is the most economic carrier. The risk clearance is only a geometrical criteria for the risk arising from possible ship impact. The load values for use in accidental combinations from traffic on waterways are generally based on a design impact energy which is deformation energy. Accidents in waterway traffic and ship bridge collisions are rare events which happen at random and under the influence of various governing conditions.
