Numerical models for evolution of extreme wave groups

TL;DR

This paper compares two numerical models, a Lagrangian wave model and a VoF model, for simulating the evolution of steep breaking waves, validating results against experimental data and demonstrating good agreement.

Contribution

It introduces a new method for treating spilling breaking in a Lagrangian wave model and compares its performance with a VoF model created in OpenFOAM.

Findings

Lagrangian model accurately reproduces experimental wave evolution.

VoF model shows good agreement with Lagrangian results and experiments.

Differences are minimal around the breaking crest region.

Abstract

The paper considers the application of two numerical models to simulate the evolution of steep breaking waves. The first one is a Lagrangian wave model based on equations of motion of an inviscid fluid in Lagrangian coordinates. A method for treating spilling breaking is introduced and includes dissipative suppression of the breaker and correction of crest shape to improve the post breaking behaviour. The model is used to create a Lagrangian numerical wave tank, to reproduce experimental results of wave group evolution. The same set of experiments is modelled using a novel VoF numerical wave tank created using OpenFOAM. Lagrangian numerical results are validated against experiments and VoF computations and good agreement is demonstrated. Differences are observed only for a small region around the breaking crest.