Amplification of Nonlinear Response of Floating Photovoltaics by Coastal Topography: Experimental and Numerical Study

Nearshore coastal regions have become popular for floating photovoltaics (FPV) installations. During propagation over seabed topography towards nearshore FPV systems, waves undergo intricate transformations by shoaling, reflection and refraction, potentially influencing hydrodynamic responses of these emerging marine renewable energy structures in ways that are not well understood. Therefore, wave flume experiments and multiscale fully coupled time-domain fluid-structure interaction (FSI) simulations are performed to examine the topography effect on the nonlinear responses of nearshore FPV systems at a field site in the East China Sea. Experimental results reveal that near-resonant wave interactions in coastal regions drive significant energy transfer among different wave frequencies, amplifying the nonlinear dynamic responses of FPV systems by channeling energy toward their natural modes. As a result, second-order heave and pitch responses are amplified by up to 117.87% and 136.38% compared to the case without topography, which in turn lead to an increase in mooring tension. Moreover, the topography-induced amplification of nonlinear wave harmonics enhances the surge mean drift of FPV. This enhancement exhibits a negative correlation with the relative FPV length with respect to the wavelength. Comparisons between experiments and fully coupled simulations for irregular waves indicate that neglecting topography causes the FPV dynamic response model to produce inaccurate estimations of heave/pitch motions, while FSI simulations forced by high-fidelity local wave fields predicted by the fully nonlinear Boussinesq wave model are capable of capturing the observed topographic effect. These findings provide the theoretical basis for design consideration of the safe, cost-effective deployment of efficient FPV systems in coastal waters.