Comparative analysis of design recommendations for quay walls

The design and construction of quay walls is a problem in which people are interested for ages. There are many methods and recommendations developed for this topic. They differ for each country and type of structure and are developed for local conditions. Some of these methods and recommendations are collected in a national code, which can be used for the design of maritime structures.In Europe they try to normalize all national codes to obtain one European standard. Each of the European members can add their national parameters to this code. For the normalization of codes it is interesting to investigate which codes are available and which methods are used in the national codes.In this analysis are the difference between design guidelines for quay walls considered, with specialattention to the safety analysis and design process, to find an overview of design results. Therefore firsta global analysis of contents is carried out. This results in 4 guidelines with a clear safety approach, alsoadapted to the latest design philosophies: CUR 166 and Handbook Quay Walls (both Dutch), EAU 2004(German), Eurocode 7 (European Union). The last one is not used, because it is still under constructionand includes mainly the safety approaches treated in the other 3 guidelines.For CUR 166, Handbook Quay Walls and EAU 2004 comparative calculations are carried out in a beamon elastic foundation model. Two cases are considered which are very typical for quay walls in the Portof Rotterdam: a quay wall with 12 m retaining height and a quay wall with 30 m retaining height (thisone includes a superstructure).First, for all guidelines the characteristic parameters are determined: water levels, geotechnicalproperties and external loads. The geometrical aspects and material parameters are kept the same for theanalysis.The safety approach in the guidelines give the greatest difference in the design process. If a fault tree ispresent, the failure mechanism can be overviewed, which is very useful for design calculations. Mainlythe application of safety factors on actions or action effects lead to different answers. The CUR 166applies safety factors on soil strength parameters (actions), the Handbook Quay walls and EAU 2004applies the safety factors on action effects (internal forces).The EAU 2004 gives in all calculations the smallest bending moments and anchor forces for theapplication in a beam on elastic foundation program. This is mainly due to the higher strength of the soilproperties in the EAU 2004 and due to the fact that the Blum schematization does not satisfy in thebeam on elastic foundation program.For the calculation of case 1 (retaining height 12 m) the Handbook Quay Walls gives higher bendingmoments than CUR 166, mainly due to the application of a special load combination with extremescour. For the calculations of case 2 (retaining height 30 m) the CUR 166 gives higher bending momentsthan Handbook Quay Walls. This is mainly due to the application of the relieving platform incombination with safety factors on the soil strength parameters, which results in higher bendingmoments.It can be concluded that the EAU 2004 is not useful for application in a beam on elastic foundationprogram. The CUR 166 and Handbook Quay Walls are very useful for a beam on elastic foundationmethod. Mainly the Handbook Quay Walls is very specialized on quay walls structures. It includescertain load combinations, descriptions for the calculation of a superstructure and applies partial safetyfactors on action effects. This makes the Handbook Quay Walls more useful for the design of quay wallstructures than CUR 166.