An Experimental Investigation of Wave Forces on a Submerged Horizontal Plate over a Simple Slope

Jie Dong,Leiping Xue,Chi Zhang,Jian Shi,Kaiyu Cheng

doi:10.3390/jmse8070507

Abstract

We experimentally investigated the forces induced by monochromatic and solitary waves on a submerged horizontal plate in a wave flume. The experimental results of two-dimensional wave forces on the plate over a 1:10 simple slope and a flat bottom are presented. The effects of the uneven bottom on wave loads are discussed by comparing the results with those in a constant water depth. The measured nonlinear wave forces exhibited considerable discrepancies with the theoretical results from the linear wave theory. The wave forces on the plate induced by monochromatic waves over the simple slope in intermediate water showed no appreciable difference with the flat-bottom results. The solitary wave forces in terms of the downward vertical force and overturning moment significantly decreased in the existence of the simple slope. Furthermore, the dependency of the wave length, wave height and the submergence depth on the wave loads is also discussed.

Highlights

A fully submerged horizontal plate is a common simplified type of many coastal and ocean engineering structures and is often suggested as a plate-type breakwater [1,2], semi-submersible very large floating structure (VLFS) [3], or plate-type wave energy converter (WEC) [4,5,6]
A series of wave force experiments on a submerged horizontal plate with regular waves and solitary waves were performed on a flat bottom and a 1:10 simple slope
For the effect of submergence depth, we found that the horizontal forces were not influenced by the submergence depth, while the vertical forces and overturning moment were slightly affected by the submergence depth

Summary

Introduction

A fully submerged horizontal plate is a common simplified type of many coastal and ocean engineering structures and is often suggested as a plate-type breakwater [1,2], semi-submersible very large floating structure (VLFS) [3], or plate-type wave energy converter (WEC) [4,5,6]. Lo and Liu [30] investigated the interactions between a solitary wave and a submerged horizontal plate in shallow water They presented the theoretical, experimental and numerical results of hydrodynamic loads on the plate for incident solitary waves on a flat bottom. We present an experimental comparative study on wave scattering by a submerged horizontal plate over a 1:10 simple slope to evaluate the effects of an uneven bottom on the wave-induced forces. Both monochromatic and solitary waves were considered in the experiments. The behavior of wave-induced forces with a simple slope are discussed for both the monochromatic and solitary waves and compared with linear solutions of the problem

Experimental Set-Up

Regular Waves

Solitary Waves

Conclusions

Findings