A pFFT-FE coupling for hydroelastic analysis of floating flexible structures in waves

A pFFT-FE coupling method, which can calculate the hydroelastic behavior of floating flexible structures, has been developed. The method can handle a very large number of constant hydrodynamic panels in a reasonable CPU time. The scheme uses a consistent way of the data passing in which the energy is conserved between the generalized modal damping and the radiation waves if the hydrodynamic analysis is accurate enough. In addition, the scheme satisfies the generalized Haskind-Newman relation between the modal diffraction force and the Kochin function. These properties are important to ensure the numerical accuracy. The numerical convergence and the accuracy of the method are demonstrated in various ways including the comparison with experimental data. Finally an application to the sailing type offshore wind-power plant is shown to demonstrate the applicability of this method to the challenging problem. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.