Offshore platforms operating in harsh ocean environments often suffer from severe wave impacts which threaten the structural integrity and staffs safety. An experimental study was carried out to investigate the wave impact load and its effect on the global response of a semi-submersible. First, two typical wave impact events occurring successively in the wave test run are analyzed, including the characteristics of incident waves, relative wave elevations and the spatial distribution of the wave impact load. Subsequently, the corresponding global response of the semi-submersible under these two wave impacts are investigated in time domain. It reveals that compared with the incident wave, the relative wave elevation has a more straightforward relationship with the wave impact load. The relative wave crest height is associated with the spatial distribution of the wave impact load, while the local wave steepness matters more in the magnitude of the wave impact load. The impulsive effect of the wave impact load on the motion behaviors is not obvious. But severe wave impacts can introduce excessive horizontal accelerations and nonlinear behaviors like ringing in the acceleration response.
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