Nonlinear-wave effects on fixed and floating bodies

A numerical method for calculating the interaction of steep (nonlinear) ocean waves with large fixed or floating structures of arbitrary shape is described. The interaction is treated as a transient problem with known initial conditions corresponding to still water in the vicinity of the structure and a prescribed incident waveform approaching it. The development of the flow, together with the associated fluid forces and structural motions, are obtained by a time-stepping procedure in which the flow at each time step is calculated by an integral-equation method based on Green's theorem. A few results are presented for two reference situations and these serve to illustrate the effects of nonlinearities in the incident waves.