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We consider a flap gate farm, i.e. a series of P arrays, each made of Q neighbouring flap gates, in an open sea of constant depth, forced by monochromatic incident waves. The effect of the gate thickness on the dynamics of the system is taken into account. By means of Green's theorem a system of hypersingular integral equations for the velocity potential in the fluid domain is solved in terms of Legendre polynomials. We show that synchronous excitation of the natural frequencies of Sammarco et al. (2013) yields large amplitude response of gate motion. This aspect is fundamental for the optimisation of the gate farm for energy production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We consider a flap-gate farm, i.e. a series of P arrays, each made by Q neighboring flap gates, in an infinitely long channel. We show that there are P × (Q − 1) natural modes and determine their eigenfrequencies and modal forms. When the distance between the arrays goes to infinity the eigenfrequencies converge to the Q − 1 values given by Li and Mei [14]. For an ad-hoc combination of channel geometry and flap gate characteristics, modal excitation can give significantly larger response than for the case of a single or a sparse gate system. This aspect is relevant for the design of an optimal gate farm wave energy converter. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]