LOCAL AND GLOBAL HYDROELASTIC ANALYSIS OF A VLFS

A 2D composite method to study the behavior of a VLFS in waves is presented. It merges a linear global solution with a nonlinear local analysis. The former preliminarily estimates the global motions of the platform and allows identifying the conditions for dangerous local phenomena to occur, i.e. bottom slamming and water on deck. The cases selected are investigated by the latter analysis to predict the induced structural loads. These are then added to the other loads for a 'corrected' linear global-motion analysis (in the time domain). Each component of the solution algorithm has been validated against experimental data and other numerical results.