An optimization of eigenfunction expansion method for the interaction of water waves with an elastic plate

The hydroelastic interaction of an incident wave with a semi-infinite horizontal elastic plate floating on a homogenous fluid of finite depth is analyzed using the eigenfunction expansion method. The fluid is assumed to be inviscid and incompressible and the wave amplitudes are assumed to be small. A two-dimensional problem is formulated within the framework of linear potential theory. The fluid domain is divided into two regions, namely an open water region and a plate-covered region. In this paper, the orthogonality property of eigenfunctions in the open water region is used to obtain the set of simultaneous equations for the expansion coefficients of the velocity potentials and the edge conditions are included as a part of the equation system. The results indicate that the thickness and the density of plate have almost no influence on the reflection and transmission coefficients. Numerical analysis shows that the method proposed here is effective and has higher convergence than the previous results.