FEM for time domain analysis of hydroelastic response of VLFS with fully nonlinear free-surface conditions

Abstract

A finite element method (FEM) is developed for the time domain analysis of the hydroelastic deformation of a pontoon-type very large floating structure (VLFS) with fully nonlinear free-surface conditions. A 3-dimensional free-surface flow is formulated in the scope of potential flow theory with the nonlinear free-surface conditions. To describe the motion of VLFS, the Mindlin plate modeling is adopted. The equation of plate motion is discretized by finite elements using the virtual work principle and integrated by the Newmark method. To consider the fluid-structure interaction, the nonlinear free-surface motion and the plate motion are numerically solved through an iterative method at each time step.