There’s a fairly crude equation in the American bridge engineering standard that relates impact load to the mass of a ship, which is:
P =√(DWT) ±50%
Where DWT is the deadweight tonnage, and P is the impact load in meganewtons.
So in this case P=315MN ±50% which is 315000kN or 31500 tonnes of force…
For comparison, I’m working on a project where we’re going to build a new concrete bridge on the ground next to where it needs to go (under a railway) then wait until we have a planned week with no trains running and push it into position using jacks. That bridge is a 60m long 20m wide 8m high concrete box with 1m thick walls and top and bottom slabs, and we think we will need about 30MN to install it (one tenth of the impact load from that ship).
That ship was about 100,000t.
There’s a fairly crude equation in the American bridge engineering standard that relates impact load to the mass of a ship, which is:
P =√(DWT) ±50%
Where DWT is the deadweight tonnage, and P is the impact load in meganewtons.
So in this case P=315MN ±50% which is 315000kN or 31500 tonnes of force…
For comparison, I’m working on a project where we’re going to build a new concrete bridge on the ground next to where it needs to go (under a railway) then wait until we have a planned week with no trains running and push it into position using jacks. That bridge is a 60m long 20m wide 8m high concrete box with 1m thick walls and top and bottom slabs, and we think we will need about 30MN to install it (one tenth of the impact load from that ship).
So yeah… that’s quite a hit.
Yeah but long tons or short tons. If they used shorter tons maybe the boat would have slipped right between the leg things. The tons were too long. 🪿