Springing analysis of a seagoing vessel using fully coupled BEM–FEM in the time domain

Abstract

The quasi-steady resonant vibration of a flexible seagoing vessel under resonant wave excitation force, called springing, is studied in this paper. A higher-order B-spline Rankine panel method is used to represent the effects of the fluid motion surrounding this flexible seagoing vessel, and a finite element formulation based on Vlasov beam is employed for structural response. The boundary integral equation and finite element equation, both for fluid and structural domains, are fully coupled with each other using an iterative implicit method in the time domain. Coupling between the two field equations is achieved by relying on fixed-point iteration with relaxation aided by Aitken's δ 2 process to maximize convergence speed. The steady–unsteady coupling term or m-term in the linearized body boundary condition derived by Timman and Newman is taken into account for accurate prediction of flexible body motion when forward speed is present. The 2nd derivative of basis potential in the m-term is obtained by modifying Nakos approach, which was originally developed using the Stokes theorem for rigid body ship motion problem. For the solution of the FE equation, instead of conventionally used modal superposition method, a direct integration scheme based on Newmark method is employed. It is believed that this technique is more attractive in the sense that it allows us free from the selection of optimum number of mode-shapes in the computation.