Briefing: Maritime Structures – the design of challenging vertical pile dolphin solution

Abstract

The demand for energy in Southeast Asia and the Pacific region has resulted in vast growth in gas exploration across the continent of Australia. With the approval for a number of liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities across the Australian seaboard, Arup Australasia has put its multi-disciplinary capabilities to full use in the delivery of a number of LNG jetties in Gladstone, Queensland in a design and construct collaboration with the contractor John Holland Group (JHG). This paper presents the design and construction of the dolphin structures, which were the result of close collaboration between JHG and Arup. The goal of this paper is to describe the importance of early constructability considerations and the complex interface between maritime, geotechnical and structural disciplines. The paper outlines the inputs and the consideration of both berthing and mooring dolphins designed to accommodate berthing and mooring of vessels of up to 220 000 m3 capacity. The approach of the paper is to describe the design solution in broad terms and selected key aspects in detail.