Experimental Investigation of the First and Second Order Wave Exciting Forces on a Restrained Body in Long Crested Irregular Waves

The paper presents an experimental investigation of the first order and second order wave exciting forces acting on a body of simple geometry subjected to long crested irregular waves. The body is axis-symmetric about the vertical axis, like a vertical cylinder with a rounded bottom, and it is restrained from moving. Second order spectral analysis is applied to obtain the linear spectra, coherence spectra and cross bi-spectra of both the incident wave elevation and of the horizontal and vertical wave exciting forces. Then the linear and quadratic transfer functions (QTF) of the exciting forces are obtained. The QTF obtained from the analysis of irregular wave measurements are compared with results from experiments in bi-chromatic waves and with numerical predictions from a second order potential flow code.