A NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION ON HYDRODYNAMIC INTERACTION COEFFICIENTS FOR A GROUP OF TRUNCATED COMPOSITE CYLINDERS FLOATING IN WAVES

When a group of bodies are floating closely in waves, the fluid loading on these bodies will be influenced due to the presence of the neighboring bodies. The wave loading on each of these bodies are affected, because of the sheltering or wave reflection effects due to the presence of surrounding floating bodies, while additional loads are exerted by the radiated waves produced by the motions of the nearby floating bodies. For a multiple floating body system, it is important to precisely compute the hydrodynamic interaction coefficients, since these parameters will be used later to solve the 6xN simultaneous equations to predict the motion responses (where N is the number of freely floating bodies in the multi-body system). On the other hand, the hydrodynamic interaction coefficients are absent for an isolated floating body case. This paper investigates the hydrodynamic interaction coefficients for a group of three dimensional (3-D) bodies floating freely in each other 's vicinity. Since the nature of hydrodynamic interaction is rather complex, it is usually recommended to study this complicated phenomenon using numerically accurate scheme. A computer code developed using 3-D source distribution method which is based on linear three-dimensional potential theory is used and the validation of the computer code has been justified by comparing the present results with that of the published ones for the hydrodynamic interaction coefficients of multiple bodies. The agreement between the calculated results with those of the published ones is quite satisfactory. Numerical simulations are further conducted for a group of identical truncated composite circular cylinders floating vertically at close proximity in regular waves. During the computations of hydrodynamic interaction coefficients of this multi-body model for different groups, the number of members in the group as well as the gap width among them has been varied. The paper also examines the occurrence of hydrodynamic resonances in the gap among the floating bodies and the presence of spikes with rapid fluctuation in the results of the diagonal and coupling terms for interaction coefficients. Finally, some conclusions are drawn on the basis of the present analysis.