ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: In this paper, the collision behaviors between the navigating vessel and the fender systems against the medium collision event were studied. The considered fender systems were the steel fender system and the rubber fender system, and it was assumed that these fenders were fixed on the face of bridge substructure. The bow structure of collision vessel that had the standardized dimensions by design code was model by shell elements. The main body of vessel was modelled by the elastic beams that represent the mass distribution, and the buoyancy springs were attached to the main body to represent the change of potential energy caused by buoyancy effects. The analysis were performed by the nonlinear explicit method with the considerations of collision conditions, such as, the collision velocities, the collision angles and the friction coefficients.
