Wave forces on a circular dock

Abstract

The scattering of surface gravity waves by a circular dock is considered in order to determine the horizontal and vertical forces and torque on the dock. An incident plane wave is expanded in Bessel functions, and for each mode the problem is formulated in terms of the potential on the cylindrical surface containing the dock and extending to the bottom. The solution is shown to have phase independent of depth and so may be obtained from an infinite set of real equations, which are solved numerically by Galerkin's method. The convergence of the solution is discussed, and some numerical results are presented.This problem has been investigated previously by Miles & Gilbert (1968) by a different method, but their work contained errors.