Nonlinear wave surface elevation around a multi-column offshore structure

Surface elevation around multiple column offshore structure is an important phenomenon crucial to air gap design of offshore platforms. This paper investigates the competing hydrodynamic phenomena, i.e., wave run-up of surface elevation rising along the column and near-trapping – the increase of surface elevation due to near-resonance among the columns. Both wave run-up and near-trapping have the characteristics of generating surface elevation peak and often impact the offshore structures with nonlinear wave loads and potentially cause slamming to platforms. With the free-surface Keulegan-Carpenter number Kc<O(1) and wave steepness H/L < 0.14 considered, the free surface amplitude primarily depends on the diffraction pattern caused by the multiple columns and potential theory is applicable. The wave run-up and near-trapping due to wave interaction with a platform consisting of four-square columns with different corner ratios are obtained by numerical simulations. It is found that the increasing corner ratio results in a lower wave run-up under 0° incident wave, but a higher wave run-up under 45° incident wave. For near-trapping among four columns, the peak surface elevation decreases with increasing corner ratio. Two mechanisms namely superposition and near-resonance resulting the peak surface elevation are examined in detail for wave interaction with multiple columns.