Hydroelastic Behavior of a Floating Ring-Shaped Plate

The interaction between incident surface water waves and floating elastic plate is studied. This paper considers the diffraction of plane incident waves on a floating flexible ring-shaped plate and its response to the incident waves. An analytic and numerical study of the hydroelastic behavior of the plate is presented. An integro-differential equation is derived for the problem and an algorithm of its numerical solution is proposed. The representation of the solution as a series of Hankel functions is the key ingredient of the approach. The problem is first formulated. The main integro-differential equation is derived on the basis of the Laplace equation and thin-plate theory. The free-surface elevation, plate deflection and Green’s function are expressed in polar coordinates as superpositions of Hankel and Bessel functions, respectively. These expressions are used in a further analysis of the integro-differential equation. The problem is solved for two cases of water depth infinite and finite. For the coefficients in the case of infinite depth a set of algebraic equations is obtained, yielding an approximate solution. Then a solution is obtained for the general and most interesting case of finite water depth analogously in the seventh section. The exact solution might be approximated by taking into account a finite number of the roots of the plate dispersion relation. Also, the influence of the plate’s motion on wave propagation in the open water field and within the gap of the ring is studied. Numerical results are presented for illustrative purposes.