Ship collision on bridge is a dynamic process featured by high nonlinearity and instantaneity. Calculating ship-bridge collision force typically involves either the use of design-specification-stipulated equivalent static load, or the use of finite element method (FEM) which is more time-consuming and requires supercomputing resources. In this paper, we proposed an alternative approach that combines FEM with artificial neural network (ANN). The radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) employed for calculating the impact force in consideration of ship-bridge collision mechanics. With ship velocity and mass as the input vectors and ship collision force as the output vector, the neural networks for different network parameters are trained by the learning samples obtained from finite element simulation results. The error analyses of the learning and testing samples show that the proposed RBFNN is accurate enough to calculate ship-bridge collision force. The input-output relationship obtained by the RBFNN is essentially consistent with the typical empirical formulae. Finally, a special toolbox is developed for calculation efficiency in application using MATLAB software.
