Numerical investigation of piston-modal wave resonance in the narrow gap formed by a box in front of a wall

Abstract

Piston-modal wave resonance between a ship section and a bottom mounted terminal is studied by employing a numerical wave flume based on OpenFOAM® package. A systematic investigation on the piston-modal behavior is performed to characterize the influence of fluid viscosity and flow rotation. Around the resonant frequency, the fluid viscosity and flow rotation not only dissipate the wave amplitude in the narrow gap, but also increase the wave amplitude in the upstream of the box. The dynamic mechanism behind the phenomenon is found to be the interaction between the energy dissipation induced by the fluid vortical flow and energy transformation associated with free surface motion. The increased incident wave amplitude can cause the normalized wave amplitudes and wave forces to deviate more from the potential flow results, while the variation of reflection coefficient is dependent on box-wall geometries. All of these phenomena imply a more significant effect of fluid viscosity and flow rotation with the increase of incident wave amplitude, but the energy dissipation is not the only factor in piston-modal resonance.