The Submerged Floating Tunnel: An experimental study on the hydrodynamics and kinematics of a submerged rectangular cylinder in a wave-current environment

This study presents the results of small scale flume experiments on a submerged rectangular cylinder subjected to a current, regular wave and combined wave-current environment. The objective of the study is to gain more knowledge about the hydrodynamics around and the kinematics of a submerged structure, to give a contribute to the research field of the submerged floating tunnel. For this study a rectangular cylinder with an aspect ratio (breadth-depth) of 2.5 is used. Two relative submergence depths (flume depth/model submergence) of 2.75 and 1.63 are tested. For all tests a still water depth of 0.7 m is applied. Waves resulting in very low KC numbers of <1 for regular waves and KC[1+U_c/U_m ]<2 for combined waves-current are generated. To create a combined wave-current environment, a current is created in the flume, to which waves are added by the wave generator. The water velocity is measured in front of the model. To approximate the water velocity at the model, a time/phase shift is added to the velocity signal. Linear wave theory is applied to approximate the amplitudes of the orbital velocities at the depth of the model. For the first part of the study, on the hydrodynamic forces, the cylinder is rigidly fixed in the flume. Due to the inertia dominance for low KC numbers, the relationship between the wave parameters and the hydrodynamic forces is well described by the relationship between the wave parameters and the water particle accelerations. The vertical hydrodynamic forces are found to be larger than the horizontal hydrodynamic forces. The force coefficients from this study are compared to coefficient found in previous studies. The drag coefficients for the only current tests agree well with the results from (Courchesne & Laneville, 1979), (Bearman & Trueman, 1972), (Nakaguchi, 1968) and (Venugopal, 2006). For the regular wave and combined wave-current conditions comparable results are found to those by Venugopal for a rectangular cylinder towed through a wave field (Venugopal, 2008). The drag coefficients in the present study show a similar trend in magnitude as in the study by Venugopal. However, the magnitudes have an opposite sign due to the velocity phase shift method applied in the present study. Nevertheless, the effect of this difference on the total force prediction is insignificant, because of inertia dominance. In general, the Morison equation predicts the measured horizontal force well for regular waves. Adding a current component to the waves results in a larger error between the computed Morison forces and the measured force. However, an increase in the magnitude of the added velocity does not lead to a significant increase of this error. The second part of the study focuses on the same cylinder, only not fixed but held in place by 4 tethers. For these tests a buoyancy to weight ratio of 1.5 is applied. The used tested angles between the tethers and the flume bottom are 30˚ and 70 ̊. The water depth, the wave types and model submergence depths are remained equal to the first part of the study. By comparing the kinematics found in three different configurations, a 30˚ tether angle combined with the largest submergence depth of ds=035 m are found to gives the smallest displacements and accelerations. To reduce the kinematics more, it is recommended to add vertical tethers to limit the vertical movement. In general, dynamic features are seen in the tethered model, influencing the magnitude of the kinematics. To predict the magnitude of the tether forces it is recommended to integrated these features in a structural dynamic model.Civil Engineerin