Investigation of Free Surface Damping Models With Applications to Gap Resonance Problems

In this paper two methods for modelling the damping in a narrow gap are investigated. The first method is called the Pressure Damping Model. This method has been used in studies of wave energy devices. An attractive feature of this model is that the modified input is directly related to the energy dissipation in the gap, which means that if this dissipation is estimated the input to the model can be obtained directly. The idea of the method is to add a pressure input in the gap to suppress the resonant motion. A challenge with the method is that it contains a non-linear term. The second method is the Newtonian Cooling damping model. The method is based on introducing a dissipation term in the free surface boundary condition. This dissipation term contains a coefficient which is not directly related to the energy dissipation. Hence this method is not so easy to relate directly to the estimated energy dissipation. An advantage with this method is that it is linear and hence can be expected to be more robust. In the first part of the paper a 2-dimensional problem is investigated using both methods. In addition to the numerical performance and robustness, much focus is put on investigation of the energy balance in the solution, and we attempt to relate both models to the energy dissipation in the gap. In the second part the Newtonian cooling method is implemented in a 3-dimensional potential flow solver and it is shown that the method provides a robust way to handle the resonance problem. The method will give rise to a modified set of equations which are described. Two different problems are investigated with the 3D solver. First we look at a side-by-side problem, where the 3D results are also compared with 2D results. Finally, the moonpool problem is investigated by two different 3D solvers, a classical Green’s function based method and a Rankine solver. It is also shown how this damping model can be combined with a similar model on the internal waterplane to remove irregular frequencies.