Abstract Summary
Floating offshore structures are of great interest for many applications. A particular type of floating structures are the so called Very Large Floating Structures (VLFS). One can find several examples of VLFS, such as floating airports, floating solar energy installations, floating breakwaters, or even futuristic floating modular cities. The study of the behavior of VLFS is, therefore, relevant for a wide variety of industries and scientific disciplines. In this work we present a novel monolithic Finite Element Method (FEM) for the hydroelastic analysis of VLFS with arbitrary shapes that is stable, energy conserving and overcomes the need of an iterative algorithm. The new formulation [1] is general in the sense that solutions can be found in the frequency and time domains, and overcomes the need of using elements with C1 continuity by employing a continuous/discontinuous Galerkin (C/DG) approach. In this talk we will show how this formulated can efficiently be used in large scale computing facilities to assess the realistic behavior of VLFS structures. We will assess the hydroelastic phenomena of VLFS with a variety of tests, including structures with elastic joints, variable bathymetry and arbitrary strucutral shapes. [1] O. Colomés, F. Verdugo, and I. Akkerman. "A monolithic Finite Element formulation for the hydroelastic analysis of Very Large Floating Structures." International Journal of Numerical Methods in Engineering (2022), In press.
