Hydroelasticity and nonlinearity in the interaction between water waves and an elastic wall

Abstract

The present study investigates the role of hydroelasticity and nonlinearity in the fundamental problem of the interaction between non-breaking water waves and an elastic wall. To this end, two interaction scenarios are considered: the interaction of a rigid wall supported by springs and a pulse-type wave, and the interaction of an elastic deformable wall and an incident wave group. Both of these scenarios are numerically simulated in a computational domain representing a two-dimensional wave flume. The simplicity of the domain enables one to perform highly efficient simulations using the high-order spectral method (HOSM). Wave generation at the flume entrance and the wave–wall interaction at the flume end are simulated by means of the additional potential concept. In this way, the efficiency that characterizes the original HOSM is preserved for the present non-periodic problems. The investigation of the first scenario reveals the influence of the wall’s dynamical response on the hydrodynamic values. The results show that the maximum wave run-up and wave force are prominently fluctuating around the values corresponding to a fixed wall as a function of the wall’s eigenfrequency, revealing regions of relaxation and amplification. The second scenario studies the effect of the nonlinear evolution of the incident wave group. The high-order wave harmonics generated during the group evolution are found to be significant for predicting extreme hydrodynamic and structural values, and may result in resonant interactions in which hydroelasticity appears to play an important role.