ANALYSIS OF A FLOATING RUNWAY UNDER BEAM SEA CONDITION OVER UNEVEN BOTTOM

The performance of a pontoon-type Very Large Floating Structure (VLFS) has been investigated with the aim of using the VLFS as a floating airport. The beam sea condition is assumed as being relevant for floating runways installed parallel to the coast line. Such type of platforms has a great horizontal extension and the sea floor topography can vary notably along the length and width of the structure. Therefore effects of variable bottom on the airport motion are investigated numerically in the present work. A Boundary Element Method (BEM) for the fluid domain and the thin plate theory for the structural motion are applied in the numerical simulation. The seakeeping problem of a pontoon-type VLFS model as a rigid body is simulated in time domain in a two dimensional numerical wave tank (NWT) with and without uneven bottom effects and by retaining the problem nonlinearities. The hydroelastic analysis of a pontoon-type VLFS is performed by assuming more general 3D conditions. The nonlinear effects are neglected and the problem is solved in frequency domain. Present results are compared with experimental data and other numerical solutions.