Investigation of ocean wave characteristic in the intermediate depth of water: A numerical simulation approach

Abstract

The paper presented is a solution of a numerical simulation of the linear wave in a 2-D numerical wave tank (NWT) to understand the characteristic behavior of the ocean wave in the intermediate depth of water (0.05:≤d/L:≤0.5) by FLUENT software and using the volume of fluid (VOF) method. Linear waves of amplitude a = 0.2m are generated in an NWT of length lx = 50m and height lz = 10m by a flap-type wave maker. In this study, different parameters such as depth of water d = 5m, wave height H = 0.4m, wavelength L = 13.793m and 22.212m and the time period T = 3s and 4s, wave steepness H/L = 0.0294 and 0.0180 and relative depth d/L =0.3682 and 0.2251 are considered for analysing the behavior of the ocean wave. The entire analysis is carried out at a distance x = 10m from the wave maker at the free surface of the water and also just 1m below from the free surface. It shows that the numerical results of waves are in good agreement with the theoretical results. It is observed from the simulation that the horizontal and vertical velocities (u&w) are more at the free surface for the time period T = 3s compared to the time period T = 4s and the velocities are gradual decreases towards the bottom of the tank. It is also observed that the dynamic pressure at the free surface (d = 0) is less as compared to the bottom (d = 5m).