Experimental Data of Bottom Pressure and Free Surface Elevation including Wave and Current Interactions

Abstract

Force plates are commonly used in tank testing to measure loads acting on the foundation of a structure. These targeted measurements are overlaid by the hydrostatic and dynamic pressure acting on the force plate induced by the waves and currents. This paper presents a dataset of bottom force measurement with a six degree-of-freedom force plate (AMTI OR6-7 1000, surface area 0.464 m × 0.508 m) combined with synchronised measurements of surface elevation and current velocity. The data cover wave frequencies between 0.2 to 0.7 Hz and wave directions between 0∘ and 180∘. These variations are provided for current speeds of 0 and 0.2 m/s and a variation of the current in the absence of waves covering 0 to 0.45 m/s. The dataset can be utilised as a validation dataset for models predicting bottom pressure based on free surface elevation. Additionally, the dataset provides the wave- and current-induced load acting on the specific load cell at a fixed water depth of 2 m, which can subsequently be removed to obtain the often-desired measurement of structural loads.