Comparisons of internal solitary wave and surface wave actions on marine structures and their responses

In this paper, a time-domain numerical model is established for computing the action of internal solitary wave on marine structures and structure motion responses. For a cylindrical structure, its side and bottom are discretized by pole and surface elements, respectively. The drag and inertial forces in the perpendicular direction of the structure are computed by the Morison equation from the pole elements, and the Froude–Krylov force in the axial direction of the structure due to internal wave motion is computed by integration of the dynamic pressure over the surface elements. The catenary theory is used to analyze the reaction force due to mooring lines, and the motion equation of the marine structure is solved by the fourth-order Runge–Kutta method in the time domain. The model is used to calculate the interaction of the internal solitary wave with a Spar platform with mooring system, and the surface wave action with the platform has also been computed by a frequency-domain boundary element method for comparison. Through the comparison based on a practical internal wave and surface wave states, it can be concluded that the internal wave force on the structure is only 9% of the one due to surface waves. However, the motion response due to the internal wave is much greater than the one due to the surface waves. It shows that the low-frequency effect of internal solitary waves is a great threat to the safety of marine structures.