Slamming load on a very large floating structure with shallow draft

The objective of this paper is to estimate the slamming load acting on a pontoon-type very large floating structure with a shallow draft. Experiments were carried out using elastic models with different rigidities in regular waves. The results revealed that the slamming load was strongly influenced by the rigidity of the model. The conditions under which slamming occurs depended on the extent of the bottom emergence and the velocity of the relative wave height at the bow of the model. These results were related to a simple procedure for estimating slamming load.