Hydroelastic Responses of Very Large Floating Structures lying over Variable Bathymetry Regions

摘要

In the present work, a coupled-mode technique is developed and applied to the hydroelastic analysis of very large floating platforms of shallow draft lying over variable bathymetry regions. Under the assumption of small-amplitude incident waves and small deflections, the linearised water-wave equations have been used, and the shallow-draft platform has been modelled as a thin elastic plate. In order to consistently treat the wave field beneath the elastic floating structure, the present approach is based on appropriate extensions of the coupled-mode model developed by Athanassoulis & Belibassakis (1999) for waves propagating in variable bathymetry regions, which is free of any mild-slope assumption concerning the bottom boundary. Numerical results concerning floating structures lying over flat and sloping beds are comparatively presented, and the effects of the bottom slope on the hydroelastic responses of the system are examined and discussed. Some of the important features of the present approach is that it can be further extended to treat the 3D problem and to include the effects of weak nonlinearity.