Regular and irregular wave propagation analysis in a flume with numerical beach using a Navier-Stokes based model

This paper describes the analysis of the propagation of regular and irregular waves in a flume by using Fluent® model, which is based on the Navier-Stokes (NS) equations and employs the finite volume method and the Volume of Fluid (VoF) technique to deal with two-phase flows (air and water). At the end of the flume, a numerical beach is used to suppress wave reflections. The methodology consists of adding a damping sink term to the momentum equation. In this study, this term is calibrated for three cases of regular incident waves (H = 1 m, T = 5, 7.5, and 12 s) by varying the linear and quadratic damping coefficients of the formulation. In general, while lower values of damping coefficients cause residuals on the free surface elevation due to wave interactions with the outlet boundary, reflection occurs on the numerical beach when higher values are used. A range of optimal damping coefficients are found considering one of them null. In one of these cases, temporal series of free surface elevation are compared with theoretical ones and very good agreement is reached. Afterwards, an irregular wave propagation, characterized by a JONSWAP spectrum, is investigated. Several gauges along the flume are evaluated and good agreement between the spectrum obtained numerically and the ones imposed at beginning of the flume is verified. This study shows the capacity of NS models, such as Fluent®, to simulate adequately regular and irregular wave propagations in a flume with numerical beach to avoid reflections.