Linear and quadratic damping coefficients of a single module of a very large floating structure over variable bathymetry: Physical and numerical free-decay experiments

Abstract The linearity assumption is widely used when acquiring the hydrodynamic coefficients of a floating structure. However, the linear damping is frequently underestimated, especially for the natural frequency. To investigate the sloping seafloor effects on the damping terms of a single module of a semi-submersible Very Large Floating Structure (VLFS), this paper revisits the conventional formulation and further proposes the direct integration method for obtaining the linear and quadratic damping coefficients from free-decay tests. Numerical free-decay simulations of the single module over variable bathymetry are carried out by the CFD numerical tank. Corresponding model tests are also implemented to verify and validate against the numerical solutions. The effects of the sloping seafloor, as well as the water depth, on the hydrodynamic coefficients are investigated based on the validated CFD modeling. Both numerical and experimental results indicate that the acquisition of the linear and quadratic damping coefficients is sensitive to the data-processing and identification approaches. For the case studied in present paper, the identification errors introduced by the conventional method are 1.5 % while they are 0.5 % using the direct integration method. The quadratic damping coefficient for heave mode decreases about 10.4 % when the sloping angle increases from 0 to 6 deg.