Time Domain Analysis on the Dynamic Response of a Flexible Floating Structure to Waves

Abstract

A time-domain numerical method is developed to analyze the hydroelastic responses of flexible floating structures to waves; in which, the boundary element method is applied to evaluate the fluid motion and the finite-element method to analyze the elastic deformation of structure. The dynamic wave-structure interaction is simulated by prescribing the conditions on a wave generation boundary for each time step and by satisfying the continuity of the pressure and displacement on the fluid-structure interface. A time-domain solution is obtained in a predictor-corrector scheme and through a time-stepping computation. The effect of space and time discretizations on the convergence and stability of solution for regular, random and solitary waves is discussed by comparing among numerical solutions. The validity of the present method is verified by comparing it with the experimental results for the three kinds of waves mentioned. Further, the fission of a solitary wave under a flexible floating structure is observed both in numerical analysis and experiments.