Progress in the Research of Wave Slamming Forces on Vertical Cylinders

Wave slamming is an important phenomenon due to its destructive power, and with the rapid development of offshore wind turbines, wave slamming on vertical cylinders has garnered lots of attention. However, the phenomenon of wave slamming on vertical cylinders is very complicated due to both the intrinsic complexity of breaking waves and that of slamming forces. The objective of this paper is to provide a general review of research related to this problem, including theoretical methods, experimental studies, numerical simulations, and full-scale measurements. Based on these approaches, the momentum theory/pressure impulse theory, spatial distribution characteristics of impacts to various breaking waves, wave generation methods, analysis methods for measured forces under structure response, scale effects in experiments, and in-situ measurements have been introduced and discussed. Results show that simplifications in existing models for wave impacting such as wave characteristics and structural response reduce its applicability and should be studied further both in theoretical, experimental and numerical researches.