Horizontal plates are a common form of coastal engineering structures such as plate-form breakwaters, very large floating structures and wave energy converters. The scattering of solitary wave with a submerged horizontal plate is numerically investigated based on Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method. Vertical force and overturning moment exerted on a submerged plate are obtained by the numerical model, and compared with the experimental data. Effects of a sloping beach to wave load are discussed by comparing with results on a flat bottom. More details of pressure distributions along the plate and flow field are also presented on flat and sloping bottoms.
A lot of coastal engineering structures can be simplified as submerged horizontal plates, for example, plate-type breakwaters, very large floating structures, wave energy converters. Wave forces exerted on the structures are key issues on the whole stages of designing, building and maintenance. It has been well documented about monochromatic waves scattering by a single submerged plate or a group of submerged horizontal plates. Reflection and transmission over submerged horizontal plates were widely investigated analytically based on the potential wave theory. Siew and Hurley (1977) presented analytical solutions for reflection and transmission coefficients of long waves for an infinitesimal thin plate in a constant depth. Patarapanich (1984) discussed variations of wave reflection with the plate length to wavelength ratio and the submergence depth ratio based on long wave approximation. An option to extend the solution from shallow water to intermediate water and deep water is using eigenfunction expansion method (EFE), which evanescent modes near the plate are involved in solutions. Cheong et al. (1995) reviewed past studies on the plate problem using EFE, and presented solutions of reflection and transmission coefficients and wave loads on the whole range of water depths.
