Hydrodynamic characteristics of floating photovoltaic foundation with different module geometrical configurations

Generally, the floating photovoltaic (FPV) power plant includes a series of floating foundations, which typically interconnected by cables in an array. The hydrodynamic performance of floating foundation array under incident wave is important for the safety of FPV plants. In this paper, the effect of 5 different floating module geometrical configurations on hydrodynamic performance of floating foundation models was investigated. All models maintain identical module parameters and system designs, ensuring that differences in hydrodynamic results are solely due to geometric configurations. The motion of module and the tension of cables between adjacent modules were numerically calculated in both time and frequency domains. The frequency-domain approach efficiently identifies hazardous wave conditions by examining Response Amplitude Operator (RAO) peaks in inter-module cable tensions, which are then used as input for subsequent time-domain simulations. The results show that both the tension of the cables and the motion response amplitude of the modules are closely related to the geometrical configuration of the module. To be more specific, the optimized module shape can reduce the maximum tension of the inter-module cables by 40.88% and the maximum motion amplitude of the modules by 27.84%. The results provide new insights into the safety design of FPV foundations.