Short crested wave–current forces around a large vertical circular cylinder

Abstract

An analytical solution for the diffraction of short crested incident wave along positive x-axis direction on a large circular cylinder with uniform current is derived. The important influences of currents on wave frequency, water run-up, wave force, inertia and drag coefficients on the cylinder profiles are investigated for short-crested incident wave. Based on the numerical results, we find wave frequency of short crested wave system is affected by incident angle and the strength of the currents. The wave frequency increases or decreases with increasing current speed following or opposing wave propagating direction. It shows that the effects of current speeds, current directions on water run-up on the circular cylinder with different radius for different wave numbers are very conspicuous when the incident wave changes from long crested plane waves to short-crested waves. With the increase of current speed, the water run-up on the cylinder becomes more and more high, and will exceed that of long crested plane wave and short crested wave case without currents even though the current speed is small. The total wave loads, inertia coefficient and drag coefficient exerted on a cylinder with currents would be larger compared to the wave loads exerted pure short-crested waves. Therefore, ocean engineers should consider the short crested wave–current load on marine constructs carefully.