Until now, widely available boundary element method (BEM) codes did not allow the calculation of two non-conventional hydrodynamic operators, which characterize the way a body diffracts and radiates waves, known as Diffraction Transfer Matrix and Radiation Characteristics respectively. When embedded into the finite-depth interaction theory developed by [1], they drastically speed up the computation of the added mass, damping and excitation force coefficients of a group (“farm”) of floating bodies.
This paper presents the implementation of their computation in the open source BEM solver NEMOH using the methodology proposed by [2]. Results for two different geometries, a cylinder and a square box, are presented and compared to an alternative computational approach developed by [3]. A very good agreement between them is found. In addition, the hydrodynamic operators of the cylinder are compared to a semi-analytical solution available in the literature showing a good match. Results obtained using the finite-depth interaction theory are shown for a generic multi-body wave energy converter (WEC) demonstrating how the capabilities added to the BEM software NEMOH can facilitate the numerical modeling of the hydrodynamic interactions in large arrays of bodies.
Alternative approaches of evaluating diffraction transfer matrix and radiation characteristics using the hybrid source-dipole formulation
