A brief summary of finite element method applications to nonlinear wave-structure interactions

Abstract

We review recent advances in the finite element method (FEM) simulations of interactions between waves and structures. Our focus is on the potential theory with the fully nonlinear or second-order boundary condition. The present paper has six sections. A review of previous work on interactions between waves and ocean structures is presented in Section one. Section two gives the mathematical formulation. In Section three, the finite element discretization, mesh generation and the finite element linear system solution methods are described. Section four presents numerical methods including time marching schemes, computation of velocity, remeshing and smoothing techniques and numerical radiation conditions. The application of the FEM to the wave-structure interactions are presented in Section five followed by the concluding remarks in Section six.

Keywords

finite element method (FEM) / mesh generation / nonlinear water waves / wave-structure interactions

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