Serviceability and Strength Analysis of a Floating Multi Story Steel Building Subjected to Rotational Ocean Wave Motion

Abstract

Rapidly rising water levels due to climate change have left coastal communities around the world unprepared for serious effects on critical infrastructure, with several airports and rail lines at risk of being permanently inundated by flood waters (Freudenberg et al., 2016). One solution proposed to this problem is the modular floating city, a self-sustaining hub of agriculture, energy production, and transportation (Flikkema & Waals, 2019). The study of the floating city exists at the intersection of civil engineering and naval architecture, as the design of each module is governed by the principles of hydrostatics and hydrodynamics. Studies have been conducted on predefined modules to determine whether the structures are stable under different wave loading conditions and accelerations are within reasonable limits concerning occupant comfort. One major limitation of these studies, however, is that rigid body motion is assumed when this may not be the case in multi story structures. Therefore, it is the aim of this thesis to evaluate the serviceability and strength of a multi story steel building in response to rotational wave motion. To do this, we will be performing an analysis of a 10-story steel frame in SAP2000 subjected to rotational accelerations to obtain deflection and acceleration values. We obtained reasonable deflection and strength values which satisfy several serviceability criteria, and can conclude that modeling the building as a rigid body gives inaccurate approximations of deflections, which are important from a construction and serviceability standpoint, but good approximations of accelerations, since these values are not controlled by stiffness. Suggestions for future work in this research include the study of more extreme storm wave conditions, as well as the study of different types of modules that elicit different responses to wave motion.