Numerical investigation on hydro-elastoplastic responses of floating laminated structures under wave action

Based on the Coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian (CEL) numerical method in Finite Element Modelling (FEM) software ABAQUS, a numerical wave flume model was established to solve the wave-structural elastoplastic coupling problem of floating laminated structures. The physical wave-generating mode was adopted to form waves by controlling the motion of a rigid plate, and the water wave dissipation was realized by establishing a damping zone with high dynamic viscosity coefficients. A two-way fluid-structure coupling numerical approach was further proposed and verified for the hydro-elastoplastic problem of floating structures. The present two-way interaction approach was validated based on the previous physical test for the floating homogenous structures and the theoretical model for the floating laminated structures. Finally, combining the composite material configuration, reinforced member characteristic, structural laminated feature, and hydrodynamic loads, a multiscale numerical framework with the CEL-FEM approach was presented to intuitively simulate the hydro-elastoplastic responses of the floating laminated structures under wave action. As an illustration, a floating laminated structure (FLS) was initially designed to consist of the lower deformable layer and the upper high-stiffness reinforced layer. Based on the multiscale numerical framework, the initial design of FLS was optimized by ameliorating the material meso-composition and reinforced member macro-parameter to realize the structural performance enhancement. Fully simulating the interactive processes between water waves and structural elastoplasticity of the FLSs under different wave conditions, the mechanism and understanding of the hydro-elastoplastic problem was elucidated by analyzing the evolutions of the hydrodynamic characteristics, plastic dissipation energy, fluid domain stress distribution, and structural responses.