Steel gates are commonly used in hydraulic structures due to their excellent mechanical properties, particularly in han-dling hydrostatic pressure. It's important to consider maintenance and operational costs when evaluating their feasibility. This re-search involved the experimental examination of three prototype steel gates, all sharing the same dimensions of 1.0 m in width and 1.25 m in height. The first gate is a conventional design made from skin steel plates and stiffened with steel channels, serving as a baseline for comparison. The second gate features a thicker steel plate without stiffeners, while the third gate presents an innova-tive design with two skin plates reinforced by a latticed internal core. Each gate was subjected to equivalent hydrostatic pressure, and their flexural performance was analyzed. A Finite Element (FE) model was created using ABAQUS soft-ware and validated against the experimental findings, showing a strong correlation between synthetic and experimental results. Additionally, a parametric study was conducted, exploring the performance of a larger gate sized 4.0 m by 4.0 m. The study found that the internally stiffened latticed gates performed the best, achieving the highest load capacity with a 22% reduction in mass compared to the traditional gate design |
