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Abstract An interconnected-modular system can be used as the floating foundation for offshore solar photovoltaic. The modular alone is a middle-hollow rectangular plate, where the hollow part sits the photovoltaic panel. A large number of modulars are interconnected to form a very large floating structure of huge hectares and a large length-to-thickness ratio, which makes its dynamic response a typical FSI problem. The Discrete Module Finite Element (DMFE) method is applied to the structure to calculate hydroelasticity under regular waves. The DMFE method first divides the structure into a certain number of macro-submodules with each of them treated as rigid bodies to perform a multi-rigid-body hydrodynamic analysis to obtain the hydrodynamic coefficients using the 3D potential flow theory. Each macro-submodule is treated as a lumped mass and the shell element is used to discretize the structure with the nodes being categorized into lumped masses, boundary nodes and inner nodes. The lumped-mass stiffness matrix is derived based on the sub-structure approach and matrix manipulations. Recovery of displacement response is given. Good agreement with the mode-superposition method verifies the current model.
Chen et al. (Sun,) studied this question.