A procedure to calculate first-order wave-structure interaction loads in wave farms and other multi-body structures subjected to inhomogeneous waves

Abstract

A typical assumption when performing analytical, numerical, and experimental studies in wave–structure interaction in multi-body problems such as for wave farms and very large floating structures is the homogeneity of the wave field. Important interactions between the floating elements are dependent on the direction, amplitude, and phase of the waves acting on each. Then, wave homogeneity is probably unrealistic in near-shore areas where these installations are to be deployed. In the present work, an existing interaction method, which allows the use of standard boundary element diffraction codes for solving the first order wave structure linear potential for each unique geometry in the problem, is shown to be able to account for inhomogeneous sea states across the domain of a multi-body problem requiring only minimal modification to its implementation. A procedure to use the method to include arbitrary incoming undisturbed wave conditions at each body is presented. A verification study was done by using an artificial numerical configuration to mimic an inhomogeneous wave field in a standard diffraction code, which was used as a reference. The results obtained using the interaction-method based procedure are shown to be in excellent agreement with the reference ones. Furthermore, an example of frequency inhomogeneity of the wave field in a wave farm is shown and the effects on the motion amplitudes and absorbed power are presented illustrating the applicability of the procedure.