Analysis of the Nonlinear Motions of a Tension Leg Platform in Time Domain
In the presence of incident waves with different frequencies, there are second order sum and difference frequency wane exciting forces due to the nonlinearty of the incident waves. Although the magnitudes of these nonlinear forces are small, they act at sum and difference frequencies away from those of the incident waves. So, the second order sum and difference frequency wane loads occurring close to the natural frequencies of TLPs often give greater contributions to high and low frequency resonant responses. The components of the second order forces which depend on first order quantities have been evaluated using the three dimensional source distribution method. The numerical results of time domain motion analysis for the nonlinear wave exciting forces in regular waves are compared with the numerical ones of frequency domain analysis. The results of comparison confirmed the validity of the proposed approach.