Computations of soliton impact onto a vertical wall: Comparing incompressible and compressible assumption with experimental validation

Abstract

This paper present numerical computations of solitary wave impact on a vertical wall. Different wave breaking cases were studied such as the high-aerated (air-pocket) or low-aerated (flip-through) in order to test the software ability to accurately reproduce the generated wall pressure loads. The numerical toolbox OpenFOAM was used here under the incompressible and compressible assumptions, together with 2D and 3D configurations. First, an idealised test case was used to validate the numerical convergence on an analytical value of the pressure impulse. Pressure impulse convergence was always numerically obtained but the pressure levels never converged under the incompressible assumption. Switching to the compressible assumption, pressure impulse and pressure time series converged both on the idealised test case and on the experimental configuration used. A large variety of spatial and temporal pressure variations were highlighted in this study that enable some physical interpretation of the impact mechanism.