On the Interaction of Waves With Intake/Discharge Flows Originating From a Freely-Floating Body

Abstract

This work is motivated by the many instances of intake/discharge flows from openings on floating or submerged ocean vessels and structures that may affect the wave field around them. Damaged vessels may release oil, or water may enter these vessels through openings. In oil skimming operations, for example, a very thin layer of oil must be skimmed off a large surface area, and therefore, oil skimming vessels require large intakes. Floating OTEC plants also require large intake and discharge volumes to sustain their operations. A linear theory is developed to obtain the motions of a 2-dimensional, freely floating body (from which steady intake/discharge flows originate) that encounters incoming waves. The boundary-value problem is formulated within the assumptions of linear potential theory by decomposing the total potential into its oscillatory and steady components. The steady potential is further decomposed into the double-model and perturbation potentials. The time-harmonic potential is coupled with the steady potential through the free-surface condition. The potentials are obtained by use of the quadratic boundary-element method based on the Rankine source. The effect of the steady intake/discharge flows on the diffraction loads, hydrodynamic force coefficients, as well as the motions of a 2-dimensional prismatic body floating on the free surface are presented. It is shown that the exciting wave forces and the hydrodynamic coefficients other than the damping coefficients are not appreciably affected by the intake/discharge flows of low Froude number for a 100MW floating OTEC plant.