EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL STUDY ON OBLIQUE WAVE-IN-DECK LOADS

Abstract

Most studies on wave-in-deck loads focus on head-on wave impingement whereas wave-in-deck loads due to waves incident from oblique directions are rarely reported. Numerical simulations for oblique wave-in-deck loads were presented in Iwanowski et al. (2002), Brodtkorb (2008) and Chen et al. (2018). However, in these studies, only numerical validations were performed against either two-dimensional experiments or empirical formulations due to a lack of experimental results. In light of this, we present the experimental results for wave impacts on a solid deck model due to a transient focused wave group incident from oblique direction in this study. The oblique experimental data is compared with the head-on counterpart by Santo et al, (2020) to investigate the incident wave angle effect on wave-in-deck loads. Numerical simulations are carried out to reproduce both the head-on and oblique wave-in-deck experiments using a three-dimensional (3D) numerical wave tank (NWT), and flow field information is interrogated to derive physical insights into complex wave-deck interactions. The solid deck model is a representative of a typical 2nd generation North Sea topside structures commonly exposed to severe winter weather. The configuration is also applicable to coastal structures such as bridges, piers, jetties or docks.