Evaluation of Seismic Design of Wharves and Piers with Performance-Based Design Method

It is realized that the economy of many littoral countries, including Iran, is dependent on the marine developments; therefore, the construction of port structures as the point of berthing, mooring, and repair of marine vessels has boomed in recent years. Hence, there has been significant research on the design of port and harbor structures, which leads to the development of performance-based design method as a highly reliable way for seismic design of these structures. Seismic actions may cause uncontrolled damages to wharves and piers, resulting in huge economic losses to the country. Iran is also one of the most seismically active zones and contrary to the seismic design of waterfront structures which still leaves much to the designer’s judgment, there are several published codes for performance-based design of building structures. So in this paper, the state-of-the-art ASCE/COPRI 61-14 code requirements on seismic design of wharves and piers has been studied along with the performance-based design method.