Numerical Simulation Of Interaction Between A Solitary Wave And The Plate Structure

Ocean engineering structures usually experience strongly nonline ar hydrodynamic phenomena in large amplitude waves which are extremely complicated.The study on the physical mechanism and characteristics of flow field in this process is one of key difficulties for the wave-body interaction problems.The theoretical analysis is hard to implement on extremely nonlinear problems,and model experiments are restricted to the high cost and scale effect.Therefore,the CFD method based on viscous fluid theory is considered to be more powerful in solving the interaction of extreme waves with structures.There are plenty of plate structures in the ocean engineering facilities.However,the failure mechanism and distribution characteristics of flow field for these structures in the large amplitude waves have not been solved yet.Firstly,this paper established a multiphase flow model in the cartesian coordinate system by solving the Navier Stokes equations which can handle the strongly nonlinear problems.In the present flow solver,the advection term is solved by the Constrained Interpolation Profile(CIP)method with the third order accuracy;the diffusion term is solved by the central difference method;the Seccessive Over-Relaxation method is employed to compute the Poisson equation for pressure.For the interfaces between the different phases,highly accurate Tangent of Hyperbola for Interface Capturing(THINC)scheme is used to capture the free surface,and the geomery of solid body are determined by the virtual part icle method.The great performances of the present model,including the convergence,stability and wave-generation property are verified by the numerical simulations of sine waves and solitary waves.Based on the established model,interactions of a solitary wave with plate structures are studied in this paper,including a fixed flat plate and a constant vertical barrier.For the impact effect of solitary wave on the flat plate,present study mainly focus on the wave loads acting on structure.The present numerical model is demonstrated to have the capability in predicting the hydrodynamic forces by the sufficient comparisons between the present results and other data.Furthermore,the effect of nonlinear phenomena,including the overtopping and wave breakin g,on the wave loads is studied in this paper.On the other hand,present study pay s the main attention to the free-surface motion and characteristics of flow field in the problem of interaction between a solitary wave and vertical barrier.According to experimental results from the published paper,the accuracy and reliability of the present model in simulating flow field and computing the free surface motion are validated and illustrated.Moreover,the effect of structural geometry parameters on the free surface transformation,characteristics of wave propagation,and the f ield of velocity and pressure are studied.Sufficient numerical validations and detailed results analysis are conducted by the present study for the interaction of a solitary wave with t he plate structures.The results of current research show that the present numerical results agree well with the available experimental data in most cases.The numerical model of this paper can simulate the surface motion and distribution characteristics o f flow field with a high accuracy,and provide the quantitative and reliable prediction of wave forces for the plate structures.The relevant discussions and obtained conclusions based on the present simulations and computations are promising to provide th e important implications for the design and construction of ocean engineering structures.