Numerical Study on the Fluid Interactions and Gap Resonance Between Two Adjacent Floating Bodies

The analyses of fluid interactions between multiple floating bodies have been of practical importance in the field of ocean engineering, such as float-over installation, offshore side-by-side operation and floating solar photovoltaic (FPV) system with array of adjacent floating bodies. Waves dominated by the diffraction potential show substantial wave surface elevation at gaps in multiple floating bodies, so there is an urgent need for an in-depth mechanistic study of this problem. In this study, a side-by-side operation ship model of two ships with identical main scales is taken as the research object, and the potential flow theory is taken as the basic framework to establish the three-dimensional boundary element method based on the free surface Green’s function which is applicable to the analysis of wave interaction response. The self-developed floating body hydrodynamic calculation program is used to simulate the wave surface at the gap of the two-ship model under different frequency waves. It was found that at high frequencies, a large increase in the wave surface occurs in the gap of multiple floating bodies, and that the wave surface rise is mainly caused by diffraction waves.