Hydroelastic response of a circular plate in waves on a two-layer fluid of finite depth

The hydroelastic response of a circular, very large floating structure (VLFS), idealized as a floating circular elastic thin plate, is investigated for the case of time-harmonic incident waves of the surface and interfacial wave modes, of a given wave frequency, on a two-layer fluid of finite and constant depth. In linear potential-flow theory, with the aid of angular eigenfunction expansions, the diffraction potentials can be expressed by the Bessel functions. A system of simultaneous equations is derived by matching the velocity and the pressure between the open-water and the plate-covered regions, while incorporating the edge conditions of the plate. Then the complex nested series are simplified by utilizing the orthogonality of the vertical eigenfunctions in the open-water region. Numerical computations are presented to investigate the effects of different physical quantities, such as the thickness of the plate, Young’s modulus, the ratios of the densities and of the layer depths, on the dispersion relations of the flexural-gravity waves for the two-layer fluid. Rapid convergence of the method is observed, but is slower at higher wave frequency. At high frequency, it is found that there is some energy transferred from the interfacial mode to the surface mode.