The transient response of floating elastic plates to wavemaker forcing in two dimensions

Abstract

The time-dependent linear motion of a group of floating thin elastic plates is considered in a two-dimensional fluid domain. Forcing is provided by a wavemaker and the waves that transmit through the group of plates are partially reflected by a beach. Fourier transforms are used to relate the solutions in the time- and frequency-domain, where a solution is found using a combination of eigenfunction matching and transfer matrices. This allows reflections from the wavemaker and the beach to be included or excluded in a simple manner. Numerical results show that the frequency response of a single plate is significantly affected by the resonances introduced by the presence of the lateral boundaries. For a two-plate system the relative flexural response is found to be strongly dependent on plate spacing. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.