Structural assessment of pile supported piers

Abstract

With the mobile nature of the armed forces, marine facilities are being encountered overseas for which no design data is readily available. To be able to consider such a pier in tactical planning, an assessment must be performed to estimate the load capacity of the pier. There is a group of technicians in the U.S. Navy that can perform rapid inspections on marine structures and gather data on the physical condition of the structure as well as the local environment. This data, combined with knowledge of design principles for waterfront structures, is used to provide a rapid estimate of the load capacity of the pier. This study focuses on a strategy for providing a rapid structural assessment of a waterfront pier given the information gathered during the on-site inspection combined with principles of waterfront structure design. The author has developed a program using the C programming language that, given the limited information gathered by UCT personnel, can be used in the field to provide an estimate of the structural capacity of an open, timber, pile- supported pier. The program prompts the user for various physical, environmental, and condition data and outputs various data files. A text file is produced which contains the inspection record that reflects the users input and the assessment results for the pier being analyzed. A MATLAB(Registered) script file is produced which can be used for subsequent processing