A numerical method for the calculation of dynamic response and acoustic radiation from an underwater structure

An approach combining finite element with boundary element methods is proposed to calculate the elastic vibration and acoustic field radiated from an underwater structure. The FEM software NASTRAN is employed for computation of the structural vibration. An uncoupled boundary element method, based on the potential decomposition technique, is described to determine the acoustic added mass and damping coefficients that result due to fluid loading effects. The acoustic matrices of added mass and damping coefficients are then added to the structural mass and damping matrices, respectively, by the DMAP modules of NASTRAN. Numerical results are shown to be in good agreement with experimental data. The complex eigenvalue analyses of underwater structure are obtained by NASTRAN solution sequence SOL107. Results obtained from this study suggest that the natural frequencies of underwater structures are only weakly dependent on the acoustic frequency if the acoustic wavelength is roughly twice as large as the maximum structural dimension.