Hydrodynamic performance of multiple co-axial heave plates with different diameters

ABSTRACT

Heave plates are structural components of a floating structure whose primary purpose is to increase damping and added mass in heave or pitch direction. If multiple plates are stacked along a common axis, then the relative diameters and spacing in between are important factors affecting the performance. In the present study, hydrodynamic coefficients of single, double and triple disks are experimentally investigated in different arrangements as Uniform, Concave and Convex edge shapes. It is observed that each disk in a multiple arrangement with lower diameter ratio have better hydrodynamic performance compared to the cases with higher diameter ratio when the spacing is small compared to the mean diameter. Some hydrodynamic aspects affecting floating structure design are also discussed in this paper.

KEYWORDS:

• Heave plate
• oscillating disk
• multiple heave plates
• added mass
• damping
• Keulegan–Carpenter number

Acknowledgements

The first author also would like to express their gratitude to Mr. Mehdi Alvandi and Jen Bonnet and MOOR Group members Razieh Zangeneh, Michael Choiniere, Nhu Vu Quynh Nguyen for their assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Abuzar Abazari http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6944-2067

Mehdi Behzad http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4042-6503

Krish P. Thiagarajan http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5902-5139

Additional information

Funding

The first author appreciate for the support of Crosby Hall in the Mechanical Engineering department at the University of Maine and its Manager, Stephen Abbadessa and provide thanks the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology in Iran for part of financially supporting of staying in US.