Experimental Study on Added Mass of Elastic Plate on Water

A plate structural system has great possibilities for construction of oceanic structures, especially, floating structures on the sea, which can be applied to a floating artificial base so as to construct floating airport, floating city, IT industrial base, etc.The purpose of this study is to propose an easy calculation method for natural frequency analysis of elastic plate as coupled vibration of plate and water. In the dynamic analysis of floating plate, most of research subjects were on wave response related until now, and papers focused on natural frequency analysis corresponding to response function are hardly found. In addition, experimental approaches by the model testing can't be found. The fluid analysis requires special knowledge with complicated procedure of calculation. It is known that added mass depends on frequency, and in case of vibration problem, it depends on both shape of vibration mode and frequency.Using nine testing models of plate existing on water, modal experiment was carried out as plate-water coupled vibration. The feature of added mass distribution were grasped by identifying natural frequency corresponding to vibration mode order, and through the study a practical estimation method of added mass which can be combined to structural mass, is presented. The validity of this method has been verified by the demonstration through comparisons.