Towards high fidelity numerical wave tanks for modelling coastal and ocean engineering processes
Abstract
With the increasing availability of computational resources, the engineering and research community is gradually moving towards using high fidelity Comutational Fluid Mechanics (CFD) models to perform numerical tests for improving the understanding of physical processes pertaining to wave propapagation and interaction with the coastal environment and morphology, either physical or man-made. It is therefore important to be able to reproduce in these models the conditions that drive these processes. So far, in CFD models the norm is to use regular (linear or nonlinear) waves for performing numerical tests, however, only random waves exist in nature. In this work, we will initially present the verification and validation of numerical wave tanks based on Proteus, an open-soruce computational toolkit based on finite element analysis, with respect to the generation, propagation and absorption of random sea states comprising of long non-repeating wave sequences. Statistical and spectral processing of results demonstrate that the methodologies employed (including relaxation zone methods and moving wave paddles) are capable of producing results of similar quality to the wave tanks used in laboratories (Figure 1). Subsequently cases studies of modelling complex process relevant to coastal defences and floating structures such as sliding and overturning of composite breakwaters, heave and roll response of floating caissons are presented. Figure 1: Wave spectra in the numerical wave tank (coloured symbols), compared against the JONSWAP distribution
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFMEP43C1902C
- Keywords:
-
- 0545 Modeling;
- COMPUTATIONAL GEOPHYSICS;
- 0560 Numerical solutions;
- COMPUTATIONAL GEOPHYSICS;
- 1815 Erosion;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1824 Geomorphology: general;
- HYDROLOGY