Interaction of Ocean Waves with Floating Plate

The plate is anchored to the ocean floor by taut cables. The excitation is due to either regular waves or random waves generated by high winds. The formulation is that of boundary value problems in which the structure and the ocean are treated as an integral system and the effects of wave diffractions and wave-structure interaction are properly considered. The response analysis is performed in the frequency domain. It consists of analytical solutions for the wave fields, a finite frequency domain. It consists of analytical solutions for the wave fields, a finite difference solution of integral equations resulting from the transition conditions at the plate boundary, and an approximate solution of the plate equation by Galerkin's method. Numerical examples are given. It is found that the motion of a large plate in shallow water causes a very high added mass and radiation damping. The effect of two-dimensional diffraction is important except in the very low frequency range.