Hydroelastic Responses of Very Large Floating Structures in Damage Conditions

Due to the scarcity of land space and resources, very large floating structures (VLFS) has been proposed to utilize marine resources, which has a wide range of application prospects, including floating airports, floating bridges, floating farms, etc. In reality, in-service damages may occur in floating structures because of the long-term erosion by seawater and wave actions. Existing research studies on hydroelasticity mainly focus on intact VLFS, while hydroelastic responses of VLFS in damage conditions are rarely investigated. This paper performs hydroelastic analyses on damaged beam-like VLFS to evaluate dynamic motions induced by wave actions. Mathematical formulation for the hydroelastic analysis is briefly introduced, and hybrid finite element method (FEM)–boundary element method (BEM) Python code is developed accordingly, in which damage conditions are modeled with the rotational spring method and additional flexibility matrix method. Critical parameters are selected to assess the performance of VLFS in damage conditions, including damage location, crack depth, etc. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is verified by comparing with results in existing literature. Research outcome indicates that the degree of damage conditions significantly affects the dynamic responses of VLFS. The displacement magnitudes vary with the distribution of damages, which should be handled with caution in the design procedure.