In this work, the landing manoeuvre of a catamaran vessel at a monopile foundation is investigated by experiments compared with numerical simulations. Therefore, a method is presented which allows simulating the described landing manoeuvre at offshore structures. The simulation in the time domain is based on potential theory using a boundary element method (BEM) and it computes the motions of the rigid body due to the hydrodynamic loads which consist of the incoming waves and the diffraction caused by the monopile. Further, a fender model is implemented, considering the reaction forces due to the friction and the deformation of the fender. The model is further able to distinguish between slip and non-slip condition of the fender. Apart from this, model tests of the landing manoeuvre were carried out with a catamaran model. During the tests the model pushed its fender against an equally scaled monopile. The motions of the vessel and the forces at the attachment of the fender were measured in regular and irregular waves. The obtained data which leads to a better understanding of the hydrodynamic effects during a landing manoeuvre is compared with the simulation results in order to improve the numerical method. The validation with experimental results shows that the method is applicable to quantify the risk of the fender suddenly slipping.
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