CONSIDERATIONS ON NUMERICAL WAVE TANK MODELLING

References: 14th International Multidisciplinary Scientific GeoConference SGEM 2014, www.sgem.org, SGEM2014 Conference Proceedings, ISBN 978-619-7105-14-8 / ISSN 1314-2704, June 19-25, 2014, Book 3, Vol. 2, 555-560 pp

ABSTRACT
The naval structures are permanently the subject of the environment induced loads, such as currents, waves and wind. This is the reason for, in the design stage, the assessment of these loads proves to be crucial. The numerical simulations can represent a useful instrument in order to provide the necessary data for a correct assessment and further on, for an appropriate design of the naval structures, such as ships or offshore structures. For a proper development of a numerical simulation that aims the structure behavior in waves it is very important to have a correct numerical model for wave generators and fluid domain. This work provides a comparative analysis of the results of a numerical wave tank simulation, carried with two different commercial CFD codes. The numerical model was developed by considering the Reynolds Averaged Navier – Stokes equations, solved through the Finite Volumes Method (FVM) and Volume of Fluid method (VOF). The flow domain was discretized by using a structured mesh. There were carried studies on the numerical parameters influence (such as: time and space discretization scheme, the timestep and mesh refinement) in order to identify the optimal solution for solving the wave generation and propagation problem.

Keywords: FVM, VOF, numerical, wave, tank