Session: 01-03-02 Hydrodynamics-2

Submission Number: 175069

Fluid Structure Interaction Modelling of the Regular Water-Waves Impact on Aflexible Beam 

The presented research study concerns the numerical modelling of a fluid-structure-interaction (FSI) problem, which is the interaction of regular water waves with a flexible beam. A series of experiments were conducted at the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN) and the results were detailed in a published article. The experimental setup has practical applications in wave energy converters and fixed-bottom offshore wind turbines (FOWTs), making this study significant for the offshore renewable energy sector.

The purpose of the experiments was to generate high-quality data sets that could be used to validate various numerical models commonly used by the maritime industry to solve FSI problems. The numerical models include linear, nonlinear, and high-fidelity models. The study aims to validate the numerical results produced by MARIN's in-house linear and high-fidelity FSI solvers by comparing them with the experimental data.

The fluid component of the linear FSI solver (SEACAL) is based on linear potential flow theory while the structure's response is computed by solving the linear equation of motion in the frequency domain. In ReFRESCO, the numerical model is developed by coupling Reynold's Averaged Navier Stokes Equations (RANSE) based fluid solver with a finite element model (FEM) of the flexible beam. This allows for large or nonlinear deformations of the beam while modelling the interaction between the FEM nodes as a linear spring system.

The comparison of the numerical and experimental results shows a relative error of around 10% to 15% when the beam's response was linear. However, significant discrepancies were observed when the beam's response was nonlinear.

Presenting Author: Wajiha Rehman University of Leeds

Presenting Author Biography: Wajiha Rehman holds a PhD on the modelling of water waves and fluid structure interactions from the University of Leeds. This work is a part of her PhD work.

Authors:

Wajiha Rehman University of Leeds
Tim Bunnik MARIN