Experimental study on hydrodynamic response characteristics of a novel floating box array offshore floating photovoltaic structure

The hydrodynamic characteristics of a novel floating box array model have been experimentally investigated in this paper. The surge and heave accelerations, along with the response amplitude operator (RAO) for heave and pitch are measured to evaluate the time-domain and frequency-domain characteristics of the novel floating box array model under regular wave loads. And the motion response rules and characteristics of the new type of floating box photovoltaic module have been analyzed with irregular wave loads. Moreover, the wave overtopping condition of the array box structure is observed and discussed. In this paper, the floating box array is divided into wave-affected and non-wave-affected regions. The motion is predominantly affected by the wave loads in the wave-affected region, on the other side, the motion in the non-wave-affected regions is simultaneously affected by the surrounding boxes. Under the irregular wave loads, the maximum pitch angle response decreases sequentially along the wave propagation direction, indicating a certain shielding effect within the structure. In addition, the wave overtopping on the floating-box array is more severe under random wave conditions.