Hydroelastic Analysis on a Flexible Barge Adjacent to a Floating Mobile Harbor

The increasing scale of the ship structure calls for hydroelastic analysis due to the growing flexibility compared with the regular ships which are regarded as rigid bodies traditionally. In the berthing stage of a barge, the motion responses and bending/torsional forces of the barge will be strongly affected by the flexible deformations of the barge itself and the wave elevation, which will be further affected by both the neighboring floating mobile harbor’s rigid motions and flexible deformations. In this paper, based on 3D potential theory, the coupling analysis model of a flexible barge adjoining a mobile harbor for the predictions of the motion responses and forces of the flexible barge is built. The effects of the flexibility of the barge, the distance between two adjacent structures, and the angles of incoming waves are numerically investigated. Wave elevation in the gap is also analyzed in order to explain the resonant peaks of the motion response.