A new three-dimensional numerical wave tank is developed for the calculation of wave propagation and wave hydrodynamics by solving the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. The free surface is modeled with the level set method based on a two-phase flow approximation, allowing for the simulation of complex phenomena such as wave breaking. The convection terms of the momentum and the level set equations are discretized with the finite di↵erence version of the fifth-order WENO scheme. Time stepping is handled with the third-order TVD Runge-Kutta scheme. The equations are solved on a staggered Cartesian grid, with a ghost cell immersed boundary method for the treatment of irregular cells. Waves are generated at the inlet and dissipated at the numerical beach with the relaxation method. The choice of the numerical grid and discretization methods leads to excellent accuracy and stability for the challenging calculation of free surface waves. The performance of the numerical model is validated and verified through several benchmark cases: solitary wave interaction with a rectangular abutment, wave forces on a vertical cylinder, wave propagation over a submerged bar and plunging breaking waves on a sloping bed.

The open-source CFD model REEF3D is used to simulate plunging breaking wave forces on a vertical cylinder. The numerical results are compared with data from the experiments carried out at the Large Wave Channel, Hannover, Germany to validate the model. Further, the location of the cylinder is changed so that the breaking wave impacts the cylinder at different stages of wave breaking and the resulting wave forces are evaluated. The different locations for the cylinder placement based on the breaker location are determined from the results obtained for the wave breaking process in a two-dimensional numerical wave tank. Maximum wave forces are found to occur when the breaking wave tongue impacts the cylinder just below the wave crest in all the cases simulated and the lowest wave forces are generally obtained when the wave breaks behind the cylinder. Several wave features such as the splashing on impact, the splitting and rejoining of the wave around the cylinder resulting in a chute-like jet formation are identified. The model provides a good representation of the breaking wave process and can be a useful tool to evaluate breaking wave forces on structures.

In this paper, the performance of different wave generation and absorption methods in computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based numerical wave tanks (NWTs) is analyzed. The open-source CFD code REEF3D is used, which solves the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations to simulate two-phase flow problems. The water surface is computed with the level set method (LSM), and turbulence is modeled with the k-ω model. The NWT includes different methods to generate and absorb waves: the relaxation method, the Dirichlet-type method and active wave absorption. A sensitivity analysis has been conducted in order to quantify and compare the differences in terms of absorption quality between these methods. A reflection analysis based on an arbitrary number of wave gauges has been adopted to conduct the study. Tests include reflection analysis of linear, second-and fifth-order Stokes waves, solitary waves, cnoidal waves and irregular waves generated in an NWT. Wave breaking over a sloping bed and wave forces on a vertical cylinder are calculated, and the influence of the reflections on the wave breaking location and the wave forces on the cylinder is investigated. In addition, a comparison with another open-source CFD code, OpenFOAM, has been carried out based on published results. Some differences in the calculated quantities depending on the wave generation and absorption method have been observed. The active wave absorption method is seen to be more efficient for long waves, whereas the relaxation method performs better for shorter waves. The relaxation method-based numerical beach generally results in lower reflected waves in the wave tank for most of the cases simulated in this study. The comparably better performance of the relaxation method comes at the cost of larger computational requirements due to the relaxation zones that have to be included in the domain. The reflections in the NWT in REEF3D are generally lower than the published results for reflections using the active wave absorption method in the NWT based on OpenFOAM.

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The interaction of plunging breaking waves with a pair of cylinders placed in tandem is 2 investigated using the open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model REEF3D. 3The model is validated using experimental data for total wave forces and free surface for are generally found to be less than the force on a single cylinder for the particular scenario.