Development of a fully nonlinear numerical wave tank

A fully nonlinear numerical wave tank (NWT) based on the solution of the σ-transformed Navier-Stokes equation is developed in this study. The numerical wave is generated from the inflow boundary, where the surface elevation and/or velocity are specified by use of the analytical solution or the laboratory data. The Sommerfeld/Orlanski radiation condition in conjunction with an artificial damping zone is applied to reduce wave reflection from the outflow boundary. The whole numerical solution procedures are split into three steps, i.e., advection, diffusion and propagation, and a new method, the Lagrange-Euler Method, instead of the MAC or VOF method, is introduced to solve the free surface elevation at the new time step. Several typical wave cases, including solitary waves, regular waves and irregular waves, are simulated in the wave tank. The robustness and accuracy of the NWT are verified by the good agreement between the numerical results and the linear or nonlinear analytical solutions. This research will be further developed by study of wave-wave, wave-current, wave-structure or wave-jet interaction in the future.