Comparative Study on Motion Simulation Methods of Cylindrical Buoys under Wave Action

To study the motion response of cylindrical buoys induced by waves, the same buoy model is simulated by using two buoy motion simulation methods based on respective numerical wave sink and potential flow theory, and the results are compared with the sea trial data. Comparison shows that: 1) both methods have high solution accuracy for heave motion; 2) for the pitch motion, the method based on potential flow theory gives a correct prediction trend but with low accuracy, however, this method has the advantage of requiring less computing resource, so it can be used for preliminary design of the program; and 3) the method based on numerical wave sink has high solution accuracy but requires more computational resources, so it can used to guide fine design of buoys.