Time domain prediction of first- and second-order wave forces on rigid and elastic floating bodies

The application and development of a transient three-dimensional numerical code ITU-WAVE which is based on panel method, potential theory and Neumann-Kelvin linearization is presented for the prediction of hydrodynamics characteristics of mono-hull and multi-hull floating bodies. The time histories of unsteady motions in ambient incident waves are directly presented with regards to impulse response functions (IRFs) in time. The first order steady forces of wave-resistance, sinkage force and trim moment are solved as the steady state limit of surge radiation IRFs. The numerical prediction of the second order mean force which can be computed from quadratic product of first-order quantities is presented using near-field method based on the direct pressure integration over floating body in time domain. The hydrodynamic and structural parts are fully coupled through modal analysis for the solution of hydroelastic problem in which Euler-Bernoulli beam is used for the structural analysis. A stiff structure is then studied assuming that contributions of rigid body modes are much bigger than elastic modes. A discrete control of latching is used to increase the bandwidth of the efficiency of Wave Energy Converters (WEC). ITU-WAVE numerical results for different floating b