EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF WAVE LOADING BY INTERNAL SOLITARY WAVES ON A SUBMERGED SLENDER BODY

Although ocean structures are complex, they all can be disassembled into a number of simple-shaped parts. One common shape is the slender body mentioned in this paper, and we focus on studying the mechanism of this shape. Experiments were carried out to study features of wave loads exerted by internal solitary waves (ISWs) on a submerged slender body. ISWs were generated by a piston-type wave maker in a largetype density stratified two-layer fluid wave flume. Using a three-component force transducer, the force variation of three degree of freedom (DOF) on the model was recorded. A satisfactory prediction method is established for ISWs on a submerged slender body based on internal solitary wave theory, Morison equation and pressure integral. Calculations based on this new prediction method are in good agreement with the experimental results. The experimental results and calculations show that, different incident angles, wave amplitude and layer thickness ratio have great effects on the wave loads, especially transverse incident waves bring much more severely influence. Besides the forces increase linearly with the wave amplitude becoming larger, and the maximums of the horizontal forces increase with the layer thickness ratio increasing.