A Numerical Investigation Into Hydrodynamic Interaction Coefficients for Multiple Freely Floating Bodies in Waves

Abstract

Abstract When two or more bodies are floating in waves in each other’s vicinity, the fluid loading on the separate bodies will be influenced by the presence of the neighboring bodies. The wave loads on each body are affected, because of sheltering or wave-reflection effects due to the presence of surrounding floating body, while additional loads are exerted by the radiated waves, which are produced by the motions of the neighboring bodies. For a multi-body system, it is important to accurately compute the hydrodynamic coefficients and interaction coefficients, since these parameters will be used later to solve the 6xN simultaneous equations to predict the motion responses (where N is the number of freely floating bodies in the multi-body system). This paper aims to investigate the hydrodynamic interaction coefficients for two three dimensional (3-D) bodies floating freely in each other’s vicinity. Since the nature of hydrodynamic interaction is rather complex, it is usually recommended to study this complicated phenomenon using numerically accurate scheme. A computer code developed using 3-D source distribution method which is based on linear three-dimensional potential theory is used and the validation of the computer code has been justified by comparing the present results with that of the published ones for hydrodynamic coefficients and interaction coefficients of two bodies closely floating in regular waves. The calculated results for box-cylinder model are compared with the published results and the agreement is quite satisfactory. Numerical simulations are further conducted for two closely floating rectangular barges of side-by-side position in regular waves. During the computations of hydrodynamic coefficients and interaction coefficients for multi-body model, the separation distance between the floating bodies have been varied. Finally, some conclusions are drawn on the basis of the present analysis.