Abstract
A fully non-linear numerical wave tank (NWT), based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), provides a useful tool for the analysis of coastal and offshore engineering problems. To generate and absorb free surface waves within a NWT, a variety of numerical wave maker (NWM) methodologies have been suggested in the literature. Therefore, when setting up a CFD-based NWT, the user is faced with the task of selecting the most appropriate NWM, which should be driven by a rigorous assessment of the available methods. To provide a consistent framework for the quantitative assessment of different NWMs, this paper presents a suite of metrics and methodologies, considering three key performance parameters: accuracy, computational requirements and available features. An illustrative example is presented to exemplify the proposed evaluation metrics, applied to the main NWMs available for the open source CFD software, OpenFOAM. The considered NWMs are found to reproduce waves with an accuracy comparable to real wave makers in physical wave tank experiments. However, the paper shows that significant differences are found between the various NWMs, and no single method performed best in all aspects of the assessment across the different test cases.
Highlights
A numerical wave tank (NWT) is a generic name for numerical tools used to simulate free surface waves, hydrodynamic forces and floating body motions [1]
To evaluate and compare the different numerical wave maker (NWM), this paper proposes an assessment framework based on three key parameters: accuracy, computational requirement and available features
This paper provides generalised assessment metrics and methodologies for wave generation and absorption of both monochromatic and polychromatic sea states
Summary
A numerical wave tank (NWT) is a generic name for numerical tools used to simulate free surface waves, hydrodynamic forces and floating body motions [1]. In the field of offshore and marine engineering, NWT experiments are a valuable tool used alongside physical wave tanks (PWT). Due to the underlying assumptions of inviscid fluid and small amplitude wave and body motion, the range over which these models are valid is often exceeded for offshore and marine engineering applications. Compared to lower fidelity numerical tools, high-fidelity numerical models, such as CFD-based NWTs (CNWTs), have the advantage of capturing relevant hydrodynamic non-linearities, such as complex free surface elevation (including wave breaking), viscous drag and turbulence effects. Numerous studies are reported and reviewed in [4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22], where CNWTs are employed for the analysis of different marine engineering problems
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