The effect of incident waves on arrays of identical bottom-mounted cir
cular cylinders arranged in a circle are considered. The present paper
is motivated by the recent work of Maniar and Newman [Maniar, H.D. an
d Newman, J.N., Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 1997, 339, 309-330], who s
how how large forces can be generated on long linear arrays at certain
frequencies corresponding to trapped modes present in an infinite per
iodic linear array. Their analysis for the linear array motivates the
idea of 'near trapping' in circular arrays in which it is assumed that
adjacent cylinders only differ by a change in phase characterised by
an integer, p. By using the interaction theory of Linton and Evans [Li
nton, C.M. and Evans, D.V., Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 1990, 215, 549
-569] it is shown how large peaks in the forces on circular arrays of
four, five and six cylinders develop as the gap between the cylinders
is reduced, and the peaks are shown to correspond to particular values
of p by examining the complex roots of the near-trapping system. The
largest forces appear to arise when the near-trapped mode corresponds
to a standing wave motion, in agreement with the largest forces in lin
ear arrays. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Limited.