SIMULATION OF THE COLLAPSE PROCESS OF INFRASTRUCTURE USING GENERAL-PURPOSE PHYSICS ENGINE

Abstract

In recent years, tsunamis caused by earthquakes and flooding associated with heavy rainfall have occurred in Japan. It has often been reported that bridges collapsed because of the outflow of the bridge superstructure and the scouring of the bridge pier resulting from these causes. However, to simulate these phenomena, it is necessary to carry out a coupled analysis of three types of behavior of the structure, ground, and fluid, and the calculation cost is very large. Therefore, the examination of this phenomenon has not currently achieved much progress. The purpose of this research was to perform a fluid–ground–structure simulation (such as for the collapse of a bridge pier because of flooding) at low cost, using a general-purpose physics engine. In this study, the focus was on the simulation of large deformations of the fluid, ground, and structure, and all objects were modeled with particles. First, the parameters that can simulate the behavior of the fluid were set appropriately by using the dam break problem. Subsequently, the flooding phenomenon in a river and the scouring phenomenon on a bridge pier on the ground were simulated using these parameters.