Numerical study on transient harbor oscillations induced by solitary waves

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to systematically investigate the influence of the variation of the incident wave height and the bottom profile inside an elongated rectangular harbor on relevant physical phenomena involved in transient harbor oscillations induced by normal-incident solitary waves. These phenomena include wave height evolution, oscillation amplification, total wave energy and relative wave energy distribution inside the harbor. A series of numerical experiments are carried out using the FUNWAVE 2.0 model. Results show that the height evolution of the incident wave during the shoaling process inside the harbor coincides well with Green's law. When the wave nonlinearity is relatively weak, the maximum oscillation inside the harbor can be regarded as increasing linearly with the incident solitary wave height; while as the wave nonlinearity becomes strong, the amplification factor of the incident solitary wave increases gradually with the wave nonlinearity. The total wave energy trapped in the harbor depends on both the mean water depth and the bottom profile. The relative wave energy distribution inside the harbor is greatly affected by the incident solitary wave height; however, the variation of the bottom profile inside the harbor has a negligible effect on it.