Time-Domain Hydroelastic Simulations and Structural Analyses

With extended operating environment and functionality demand for offshore platforms and vessels, various types of conceptual or large-scale offshore structures, such as very large crude carrier (VLCC), arctic offshore platforms or vessels, floating offshore mobile base, multiply connected floating breakwaters, wave energy converters, have been proposed. When designing such newly proposed structures of large scale, a complete coupled hydro-elastic theory including the structure's elasticity needs to be developed in order to achieve accurate performance assessment and structural analysis. Following frequency- domain tool developed in Kang et al., 2012, a new time-domain program for fully coupled linear hydroealstic dynamic and structural analyses has been developed. With irregular waves applied, the fully coupled interactions among rigid-body motions, elastic motions, and wave interactions are solved. Furthermore, a new methodology for direct and fast local-load estimation for structural analysis is addressed. Respective development is verified by comparison with corresponding frequency/time-domain counterparts and they show good agreement. The developed computer program can also be used for various transient problems of large-scale flexural VLFSs.