Hydroelastic analysis of circular very large floating structures

Abstract

My research is concerned with the hydroelastic analysis of a pontoon-type circular very large floating structures (VLFS). The coupled fluid-structure interaction problem may be solved by using the modal expansion method in frequency domain. It involves firstly, the decomposition of the deflection of a circular Mindlin plate with free edges into vibration modes which can be obtained in an exact manner. Then the hydrodynamic diffraction and radiation forces are evaluated by using eigenfunction expansion matching method that is also done in an exact manner. The hydroelastic equation of motion is solved by the Galerkina??s method for the modal amplitudes, and then the modal responses are summed up to obtain the total response. Exact solutions of free vibration and hydroelastic problem for uniform circular and stepped circular plates are given. The accurate deflections and stress-resultants of uniform circular and stepped circular VLFSs presented herein are valuable as they serve as benchmark solutions to check numerical methods for vibration and hydroelastic analysis of circular VLFSs.