Assessment of one-way coupling methods from a potential to a viscous flow solver based on domain- and functional-decomposition for fixed submerged bodies in nonlinear waves

TL;DR

This paper compares two one-way coupling methods between a potential flow model and a viscous CFD model for simulating wave-structure interactions, demonstrating their accuracy in predicting hydrodynamic loads on submerged bodies.

Contribution

It introduces and evaluates domain decomposition and functional decomposition coupling strategies for combining potential and viscous flow models in nonlinear wave simulations.

Findings

Both coupling methods accurately predict hydrodynamic loads.

Coupled models match experimental data over various wave conditions.

The approaches effectively integrate potential and viscous flow simulations.

Abstract

To simulate the interaction of ocean waves with marine structures, coupling approaches between a potential flow model and a viscous model are investigated. The first model is a fully nonlinear potential flow (FNPF) model based on the Harmonic Polynomial Cell (HPC) method, which is highly accurate and best suited for representing long distance wave propagation. The second model is a CFD code, solving the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations within the \openfoam toolkit, more suited to represent viscous and turbulent effects at local scale in the body vicinity. Two one-way coupling strategies are developed and compared in two dimensions, considering fully submerged and fixed structures. A domain decomposition (DD) strategy is first considered, introducing a refined mesh in the body vicinity on which the RANS equations are solved. Boundary conditions and interpolation operators from the FNPF results are developed in order to enforce values at its outer boundary. The second coupling strategy considers a decomposition of variables (functional decomposition, FD) on the local grid. As the FNPF simulation provides fields of variables satisfying the irrotational Euler equations, complementary velocity and pressure components are introduced as the difference between the total flow variables and the potential ones. Those complementary variables are solutions of modified RANS equations. Comparisons are presented for nonlinear waves interacting with a horizontal cylinder of rectangular cross-section. The loads exerted on the body computed from the four simulation methods (standalone FNPF, standalone CFD, DD and FD coupling schemes) are compared with experimental data. It is shown that both coupling approaches produce an accurate representation of the loads and associated hydrodynamic coefficients over a large range of incident wave steepness and Keulegan-Carpenter number.