• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.09c
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• pp.72-77
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• 2010

The Incheon Bridge, which was opened to the traffic in October 2009, is an 18.4 km long sea-crossing bridge connecting the Incheon International Airport with the expressway networks around the Seoul metropolitan area by way of Songdo District of Incheon City. This bridge is an integration of several special featured bridges and the major part of the bridge consists of cable-stayed spans. This marine cable-stayed bridge has a main span of 800 m wide to cross the vessel navigation channel in and out of the Incheon Port. In waterways where ship collision is anticipated, bridges shall be designed to resist ship impact forces, and/or, adequately protected by ship impact protection (SIP) systems. For the Incheon Bridge, large diameter circular dolphins as SIP were made at 44 locations of the both side of the main span around the piers of the cable-stayed bridge span. This world's largest dolphin-type SIP system protects the bridge against the collision with 100,000 DWT tanker navigating the channel with speed of 10 knots. Diameter of the dolphin is up to 25 m. Vessel collision risk was assessed by probability based analysis with AASHTO Method-II. The annual frequency of bridge collapse through the risk analysis for 71,370 cases of the impact scenario was less than $0.5{\times}10^{-4}$ and satisfies design requirements. The dolphin is the circular sheet pile structure filled with crushed rock and closed at the top with a robust concrete cap. The structural design was performed with numerical analyses of which constitutional model was verified by the physical model experiment using the geo-centrifugal testing equipment. 3D non-linear finite element models were used to analyze the structural response and energy-dissipating capability of dolphins which were deeply embedded in the seabed. The dolphin structure secures external stability and internal stability for ordinary loads such as wave and current pressure. Considering failure mechanism, stability assessment was performed for the strength limit state and service limit state of the dolphins. The friction angle of the crushed stone as a filling material was reduced to $38^{\circ}$ considering the possibility of contracting behavior as the impact.