Simulation of solitary wave run-up on a vertical circular cylinder is carried out in a viscous numerical wave tank developed based on the open source codes OpenFOAM. An incompressible two-phase flow solver naoe-FOAM-SJTU is used to solve the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with the SST k-ω turbulence model. The PISO algorithm is utilized for the pressure-velocity coupling. The air-water interface is captured via Volume of Fluid (VOF) technique. The present numerical model is validated by simulating the solitary wave run-up and reflected against a vertical wall, and solitary wave run-up on a vertical circular cylinder. Comparisons between numerical results and available experimental data show satisfactory agreement. Furthermore, simulations are carried out to study the solitary wave run-up on the cylinder with different incident wave height H and different cylinder radius a. The relationships of the wave run-up height with the incident wave height H, cylinder radius a are analyzed. The evolutions of the scattering free surface and vortex shedding are also presented to give a better understanding of the process of nonlinear wave-cylinder interaction.