Optimised Modelling On Lateral Separation of Twin-Pontoon-Net Floating Breakwater

Since the attribute of wave energy transmission is susceptible to lateral separation (S/D) between twin pontoons of floating breakwater, employing improper S/D may cause ineffective attenuation in the amount of wave energy. This paper presents a numerical optimization modeling aimed at obtaining the optimum S/D through Genetic Algorithm (GA) approach. The artificial intelligence is primarily employed to reduce transmission of wave energy coefficients and whereas increase energy loss coefficient. For this purpose, a numerical simulation implementing a MATLAB code as an interface between the Genetic Algorithm and a CFD program is used. Several parameters for the effects of various wavelength and S/D on the coefficients including a set of criteria have been considered and the optimal solution is chosen from the various population. The effectiveness of the Genetic Algorithm in leading to an optimum S/D is studied and it is shown that using a proper formulation of the problem, the Genetic Algorithm can be a very useful tool for finding an optimum S/D of twin pontoon floating breakwater with constraints on the limit wave coefficients.

Keywords: Genetic algorithm; optimization; twin pontoons; lateral separation; Computational fluid dynamics (CFD).