Effects of second-order extreme waves on the dynamics of a non-linear floating body

Nowadays technical and scientific communities are increasingly interested in the development of technologies for floating devices which can serve different purposes both in coastal and offshore environment. Thus, strong effort is required in the development of correct and efficient algorithms for studying the behavior of such structures under the action of sea wave loadings. At this purpose, in the past few years several approaches were investigated, both in frequency and in time domains, using linear and non-linear structural models and linear and non-linear wave theories. In this note, the effects of nonlinearities in the wave model on the dynamics of a non-linear floating rigid body model are calculated using the second-order Quasi-Determinism (QD) theory (see [1], [2]; [3]) under the action of extremely high waves. Structural nonlinearities consist essentially in non linear damping and nonlinear stiffness due to mooring lines, following the model shown in Nava & Arena, [4]. Numerical nonlinear simulations were performed by means of an algorithm based on the approach showed in Zheng et al. [5], and the results compared to those provided by the nonlinear QD theory. The purpose of this note is to show not only the effects of nonlinearities in the behavior of a floating body and to compare them with those obtained from a linear approach, but also to estimate them through non linear QD theory under the occurrence of a large wave in order to evaluate the reliability of the proposed approach. Copyright © 2012 by ASME.