Eb. Carpenter et al., EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF TETHERED SPAR AND SPHEREBUOYS IN IRREGULAR WAVES, Ocean engineering, 22(8), 1995, pp. 765-784
A series of large-scale experiments were conducted to examine the moti
ons of buoys in a variety of wave climates. In conjunction with these
experiments, numerical simulations of selected tests were conducted to
test the present ability of a particular computer program to model bu
oy responses. This paper considers individual wave tests for two of th
e buoy models used in the experiments, a spar buoy and a sphere buoy.
The wave field is generated using a JONSWAP spectrum. A description of
the experiments shows that each buoy is subject to. significant reson
ant responses, in heave for the spar and surge for the sphere, even th
ough wave forcing is not present at or immediately adjacent to the res
onant frequencies. The numerical simulations show generally good compa
risons with the experimental data.