EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL STUDY OF THE DEPTH EFFECT ON THE FIRST ORDER AND SLOWLY VARYING MOTIONS OF A FLOATING BODY IN BICHROMATIC WAVES

The paper presents an experimental and numerical investigation on the motions of a floating body of simple geometry subjected to harmonic and bi-harmonic waves. The experiments were carried out in three different water depths representing shallow and deep water. The body is axis-symmetric about the vertical axis, like a vertical cylinder with a rounded bottom, and it is kept in place with a soft mooring system. The experimental results include the first order motion responses, the steady drift motion offset in regular waves and the slowly varying motions due to second order interaction in bi-harmonic waves. The hydrodynamic problem is solved numerically with a second order boundary element method. The results show a good agreement of the numerical calculations with the experiments.