Fully nonlinear hydroelastic modeling and analytic solution of large-scale floating photovoltaics in waves

Abstract

This paper concerns the fully nonlinear fluid–structure interaction (FSI) of Large-scale floating photovoltaics (LFPV) in waves. The Euler Bernoulli–von Kármán beam models the structure while potential flow represents the fluid. A set of coupled dynamical equations is established. The fully analytic solution is sought with the unified Stokes perturbation method. The characteristic equation is derived up to third order, which has not been reported in literature before. The expressions obtained from the solution are applied to two typical cases of a pontoon LFPV and a membrane LFPV, with physical parameters from literature. The comparison with literature demonstrates our methodology for the membrane-type in waters of arbitrary depth and pontoon-type in relatively deep waters.