An experimental study on a compliant floating platform with a front barrier under wave action

Abstract

In recent years, solar power production has become the major source of renewable energy to combat climate change (Sahu et al., 2016), and floating solar farms (FSFs) are being explored on water space such as reservoirs and lakes at various major cities (Bi et al., 2021). Compared to the traditional ground-based solar farm, FSF requires no land use and the power generation efficiency can be increased potentially due to the water cooling effect (Golroodbari and van Sark, 2020). In addition, the coastal environment with more water space is also being considered for future development of FSF. With coastal floating solar farms, the PV panels can be supported on top of a compliant platform consisting of interconnected floating modules (Dai et al. 2020). However, excessive displacement of the platform can be induced by the incident wave action which can affect its structural stability (Sree et al., 2022). In this study, we examine the use of a submerged tensioned barrier installed in front of the FSF at a finite distance to stabilize the floating platform. Experiments were conducted to investigate the effectiveness of this protection measure. The effects of barrier length, platform length, and spacing between the barrier and platform on the displacement of the platform are investigated with respect to the wave transmission and reflection. In the following, we shall briefly describe the experimental setup and show some of the results obtained.