Linear water wave propagation through multiple floating elastic plates of variable properties

We investigate the problem of linear water wave propagation under a set of elastic plates of variable properties. The 14 problem is two-dimensional, but we allow the waves to be incident from an angle. Since the properties of the elastic plates can be set arbitrarily, the solution method can also be applied to model regions of open water as well as elastic plates. We assume that the boundary conditions at the plate edges are the free boundary conditions, although the method could be extended straightforwardly to cover other possible boundary conditions. The solution method is based on an eigenfunction expansion under each elastic plate and on matching these expansions at each plate boundary. We choose the number of matching conditions so that we have fewer equations than unknowns. The extra equations are found by applying the free-edge boundary conditions. We show that our results agree with previous work and that they satisfy the energy balance condition. We also compare our results with a series of experiments using floating elastic plates, which were performed in a two-dimensional wave tank. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.