Hydroelastic response analysis of a floating airport using numerical wave tank

Hydroelastic response of a floating airport subjected to long crested regular waves is analyzed in this study. The airport is assumed as a box shaped simple platform and a longitudinal section of it is taken as the two-dimensional computational model which is again idealized as an elastic beam. The fluid-structure interaction problem of this study is solved by a coupling technique in which the motion equation of the floating airport is implicitly coupled with the process of solving the continuity equation of fluid flow. The model is divided into several small segments and computations are carried out for different values of rigidity of the connecting system of these segments. A two-dimensional numerical wave tank developed by the author in an earlier study is used in this computation. Different frequency regular waves are generated in the numerical wave tank and motion responses of the floating airport subjected to these waves are computed. It is seen that the deflection of the structure becomes larger for relatively low frequency waves and the hydrodynamic loads exerted on the bottom of the airport can be reduced considerably introducing elasticity in the connecting system of the structure.