MINIMIZATION OF WAVE-FORCES ON AN ARRAY OF FLOATING BODIES - THE INVERSE HYDRODYNAMIC INTERACTION THEORY

Given the location and the diffraction/radiation characteristics of each member of a floating-body assembly, hydrodynamic interactions due to the multiple scattering of waves among the bodies can be accounted for exactly within the linear potential theory by the method developed by Kagemoto and Yue. The interest of this paper is the solution of the inverse problem of the above one, i.e. given the diffraction/radiation characteristics of each member of a floating-body assembly, what should the location of each body be if, say, you want the wave forces acting on the assembly to be minimal? It is shown that combining the hydrodynamic interaction theory of Kagemoto and Yue and the existing nonlinear programming techniques, the inverse problem can be solved. Through several example problems the effectiveness of the present method is demonstrated.