Category: Float Publications

San Francisco Floating Fire Station 35: Overview and Lessons Learned

The San Francisco Fire Department acquired a new floating fire station at Pier 22 ½ for their fireboat fleet. The floating station design is unique, having a steel float with an attached building that houses personnel at the station full time, accommodates sea-level rise, and is designed as an essential facility with a 50-year design life. This presentation discusses that even though this project was unusual, many of the items to consider and lessons learned can be applied to improve designs on more typical projects, such as ferry terminals.

Seismic Response of Large Pile Moored Floating Structures

Pile moored floats are usually not analyzed for seismic motions, since they are often thought to be mostly isolated from ground motions due to the flexibility of the piles and the resistance of the surrounding water. To confirm this assumption for several projects, the authors performed simplified time history analyses on multiple floats to study the effects of water resistance, soil damping, and the gap between the pile and float.