Second-order wave diffraction by a circular cylinder using scaled boundary finite element method

Abstract

The scaled boundary finite element method (SBFEM) has achieved remarkable success in structural mechanics and fluid mechanics, combing the advantage of both FEM and BEM. Most of the previous works focus on linear problems, in which superposition principle is applicable. However, many physical problems in the real world are nonlinear and are described by nonlinear equations, challenging the application of the existing SBFEM model. A popular idea to solve a nonlinear problem is decomposing the nonlinear equation to a number of linear equations, and then solves them individually. In this paper, second-order wave diffraction by a circular cylinder is solved by SBFEM. By splitting the forcing term into two parts, the physical problem is described as two second-order boundary-value problems with different asymptotic behaviour at infinity. Expressing the velocity potentials as a series of depth-eigenfunctions, both of the 3D boundary-value problems are decomposed to a number of 2D boundary-value sub-problems, which are solved semi-analytically by SBFEM. Only the cylinder boundary is discretised with 1D curved finite-elements on the circumference of the cylinder, while the radial differential equation is solved completely analytically. The method can be extended to solve more complex wave-structure interaction problems resulting in direct engineering applications.