10th Naval Platform Technology Seminar 2005

FULLY NONLINEAR WAVE SIMULATION: TOWARDS A

NUMERICAL WAVE TANK

Dr Lou Jing
Research Scientist
Institute of High Performance Computing
Singapore
loujing@ihpc.a-star.edu.sg

A. Prof. Khoo Boo Cheong

Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
National University of Singapore
Singapore
mpekbc@nus.edu.sg

Dr Zhang Xiao Tu
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
Department of Mechanical Engineering
National University of Singapore
Singapore
mpezxt@nus.edu.sg

SYNOPSIS

A numerical model in time domain is developed for the computation of fully nonlinear water waves in
two-dimensional wave tank within the frame of potential flow in this paper. In this model, the
desingularized boundary integral equation method (DBIEM) is employed to solve the boundary value
problem of velocity potential at each time step and the semi-mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian (MEL)
formulation is adopted to track the instantaneous free surface boundary. A damping layer before the
end-wall of wave tank is added to make the outgoing waves be absorbed with as little wave reflection
as possible. The fourth-order Adams-Bashforth-Moulton (ABM4) scheme is used for the time-
stepping integration of the free surface boundary conditions. The numerical saw-tooth instability is
removed by using a five-point Chebyshev smoothing method during the simulation. The developed
model is applied to the simulations of wave propagation and diffraction by a submerged horizontal
circular cylinder in a wave tank. All the numerical results are in good agreements with those of
analytical solutions or experimental data.

1. INTRODUCTION

The concept of numerical wave tank (NWT) has received considerable attention in the past
decade. The goal of NWT is to reproduce as closely as possible the flow field around marine
structures like offshore platforms or ships. It is expected to provide us the evaluation on the
hydrodynamic performance of these marine structures at a relatively low cost compared with
the corresponding experimental tests by developing the computational equivalent of a
physical wave tank facility at the stage of preliminary design. With the rapid increasing of
computer power and the development of ocean engineering in deeper seas, more and more
researchers have focused on developing the numerical solutions for the fully nonlinear water
waves in time domain in both two and three dimensions.

The simulation of fully nonlinear water waves is still computationally very intensive and
requires careful treatment of time marching for the instantaneous free surface, upstream and
downstream boundaries of NWT, and removal of possible saw-tooth instability during the

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numerical simulation. In addition, the relative effectiveness and accuracy of various

absorbing or open boundary conditions is still in debate up to now.

This paper presents the development of an efficient and accurate numerical simulator in time
domain for a two-dimensional fully nonlinear wave tank, which combines the desingularized
boundary integral equation method (DBIEM) for solving the potential flow boundary value
problem at each time step and the fourth-order predictor-corrector method of Adams-
Bashforth-Moulton (ABM4) for the time-stepping integration of the free surface boundary
conditions. The free surface is tracked by applying semi-Mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian
approach, which avoid re-meshing of the free surface. The numerical saw-tooth instability is
removed by using a five-point Chebyshev smoothing scheme during the simulation. The
model is verified against fully nonlinear water waves including the wave propagation and
wave diffraction by a submerged horizontal circular cylinder. This model can be extended to
predict the wave forces and the dynamic behavior of those surface-piercing and freely
floating offshore structures.

2. GOVERNING EQUATION AND BOUNDARY CONDITIONS

A Cartesian coordinate system oxz is employed in the sketch of two-dimensional numerical

wave tank (see Fig.1). The plane of z=0 coincides the undisturbed still water level and the z-
axis is directed vertically upward. The fluid considered in this paper is inviscid,
ρ
incompressible, and irrotational. The fluid velocity V can be described by the gradient of
velocity potential φ ( x, z , t ) in the whole fluid domain. In Figure 1, Ω denotes the whole
fluid domain, d is the water depth of the two-dimensional wave tank, ΓF , ΓB , ΓU and ΓD
denote the boundary of instantaneous free surface, bottom, upstream and downstream,
respectively. Then, the governing equation for this problem to solve is to determine the
velocity potential, which satisfies the Laplace equation as following:

z
ΓF
o x
Ω
ΓU d ΓD

ΓB
∇ 2φ ( x , z , t ) = 0 in Ω (1)

Figure 1: Sketch of 2D numerical wave tank.

The boundary conditions for the simulation of fully nonlinear water waves can be written in
detail as follows.

Bottom
ρ
On the tank bottom a non normal flux condition is used as given in Eq.(2). Where n means
the unit outward normal vector on the boundary.

∂φ ( x, z , t )
=0 on ΓB (2)
∂n

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Free surface

On the free surface, there are both kinematic and dynamic conditions. The kinematic
boundary condition requires that no fluid be transported across the free surface, i.e,

∂η ∂φ ∂η ∂φ
=− + on ΓF (3)
∂t ∂x ∂x ∂z

where η ( x, t ) is the wave elevation on the instantaneous free surface.

The dynamic boundary condition requires that the pressure on the instantaneous free surface
must be uniform and equal to the external atmospheric pressure,

∂φ 1 p
= − gη − ∇φ ⋅ ∇φ − a on ΓF (4)
∂t 2 ρ

where ρ is the density of fluid; g is the gravitational acceleration; p a is the atmospheric

pressure on free surface, and it is assumed to equal to zero from now on.

Upstream

On the upstream boundary, the fluid motion is generated by imposing the properties (surface
elevation and normal velocity) of a known theoretical wave form. For example, when
second-order Stokes regular waves propagating along the x-direction are prescribed, the
following equations are used:

 H H 2 k cosh(kd )
 η = cos( kx − ω t ) + (2 + cosh(2kd )) ⋅ cos 2(kx − ωt )
2 16 sinh 3 (kd ) (5)

 ∂φ = − ∂φ = gkH cosh k (d + z ) cos(kx − ωt ) + 3ωkH cosh 2k (d + z ) cos 2(kx − ωt )
2

 ∂n ∂x 2ω cosh( kd ) 16 sinh 4 kd

where H , ω and k are wave height, circular frequency and wave number, respectively. If
only linear regular waves are to simulate, the right hand sides in Eq.(5) are truncated to the
first terms.

3. NUMERICAL IMPLEMENTATION

3.1. Desingularized boundary integral equation method

An indirect desingularized boundary integral equation method (DBIEM) (Beck, 1994; Cao et
al., 1991; Celebi et al., 1998, 2001; Kim et al., 1998; Lalli, 1997) is used to solve the mixed
boundary value problem. The indirect method forms a solution by integrating a simple
Rankine source distribution over an integration boundary ( ΓI ) outside the whole boundary
( Γ ) of fluid domain Ω . After the above integral equations using isolated source distribution
are solved, fluid velocities can be analytically calculated.

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3.2. Semi-Mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian scheme

In order to track the instantaneous free surface, the Euler form of both kinematic and
dynamic boundary conditions are re-written within the Lagrangian frame.

Because the main concern in our present research is to simulate the fully nonlinear wave
propagation and diffraction without breaking, the wave elevation η ( x, t ) can be assumed to
be single-valued. In this paper, the semi-MEL scheme is adopted for all the numerical
simulation without re-meshing of the free surface at each time step.

3.3. Damping layer scheme

A damping layer before the end of the computational domain is employed for absorbing
wave energy gradually in the direction of wave propagation. The extra terms are added to
both the kinematic and dynamic free surface boundary conditions as following,

δη ρ ∂φ
= −(∇φ − V p )∇η + − ν ( x) ⋅η on ΓF (6)
δt ∂z

δφ 1 ρ
= − gη − ∇φ ⋅ ∇φ +V p⋅∇φ − ν ( x) ⋅ φ on ΓF (7)
δt 2

where ν ( x) is a suitable damping factor inside the damping layer to prevent the substantial
wave reflection. It has been shown in the literatures that for regular waves ν ( x) depends on
the space variable, the wave-length and frequency.

3.4. Smoothing scheme

In the MEL approach, it is found that the free surface profile starts to develop saw-tooth
instabilities when the simulation proceeds. In order to remove such nonphysical oscillations,
a five-point Chebyshev smoothing scheme (Koo, et al. ,2004) similar as that introduced by
Longuet-Higgins and Cokelet (1976) is applied to the free-surface profile and the velocity
potential during time-stepping integration procedure.

4. NUMERICAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

4.1. Wave propagation over a submerged bar

The numerical model is secondly applied for the simulation of wave propagation over a
submerged bar. Luth et al. (1994) carried out some physical experiments in a wave tank in
order to analyze the evolution of the frequency spectrum for waves traveling over a
submerged bar. The physically experimental layout and main dimensions are shown in
Figure 2. The linear waves are prescribed on the upstream boundary of the two-dimensional
wave tank. The incident waves with the conditions of wave height (H=0.02m) and wave
period (T=2.02s) are propagating along x-direction. The uniform mesh size along x-direction
is 80 nodes per wave-length, and other parameters in the numerical model is taken as those
in the previously first example. Li et al. (2001) had ever studied this problem using the three-
dimensional (3D) Navier-Stokes equation. The numerical results for the time series of wave
elevation at three different positions (x=5.2m, 12.5m, 14.5m,) are compared to the
corresponding experimental data and those of Li et al. (2001) using the 3D Navier-Stokes
equation. They are shown in Figures 3 & 4. The waves propagating over the submerged bar
have the obvious feature of nonlinear waves, although the waves at the upstream boundary

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are linear. The numerical results of the present model and 3D Naiver-Stokes model of Li et
al. (2001) are in good agreements with the experimental data although the flow is modeled
by potential and viscous flow, respectively.

z propagation direction
o x

0.4m
1 : 20
0.3m 1 : 10

6.0m 6.0m 2.0m 3.0m 23.0m

Figure 2: Experimental layout and main dimensions for waves propagating over a submerged
bar.

0.04

Experimental
0.03 Present
3D Navier-Stokes

0.02

0.01
η (m)

0.00

-0.01

-0.02
38 39 40 41
t (s)

Figure 3: Time series of wave elevation at x=12.5 m.

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0.04
Experimental
Present
0.03
3D Navier-Stokes

0.02

0.01
η (m)

0.00

-0.01

-0.02
38 39 40 41
t (s)

Figure 4: Time series of wave elevation at x=14.5 m.

4.2. Wave diffraction by a submerged horizontal circular cylinder

The wave diffraction by a fixed submerged horizontal circular cylinder is of great

importance in the field of offshore and ocean engineering. As shown in Figure 5, the
boundary of fixed cylinder in the two-dimensional numerical wave tank is ΓC , the radius of
circular is R, and the coordinate of the center of cylinder is ( x 0 , z 0 ) .
z
ΓF
o x
ΓC Ω
ΓU R d ΓD
( x0 , z 0 )
ΓB

Figure 5: Sketch of wave diffraction by a submerged horizontal circular cylinder.

The Keulegan-Carpenter number ( K C ) is introduced and defined as following,

πH
KC = e kz0 (29)
2R

where H and k are the wave height and wave number of incident waves, respectively.

The developed numerical model is firstly used to calculate the wave forces on the fixed
submerged horizontal circular cylinder, in which all the parameters and conditions are the
same as the example given as Koo et al. (2004). Fourier analysis is applied to the time series
of wave forces in order to obtain the respective harmonic components. The numerical results
and experimental data for the second and third harmonic forces on the fixed cylinder are
shown in Figure 6. It can be seen that both the second and the third harmonic forces are in
good agreements with the corresponding experimental data. It can therefore be concluded

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that the viscous effects are not important in the case of force components higher than second
order. The surface elevations above the different cylinder sizes are also given in Figure 7.

-1
Present
Experimental
-2
2nd harmonic forces
Ln(F2,3) -3

-4

-5
3rd harmonic forces
-6

-7

-8
-2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0
Ln(Kc)

Figure 6: Second and third harmonic forces on the submerged horizontal circular cylinder.

2.0

R=0.30 m
1.5 R=0.25 m

1.0

0.5
2η / H

0.0

-0.5

-1.0

-1.5
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0
x/λ

Figure 7: Distribution of wave elevation along the length of wave tank with different radius
of submerged circular cylinder.

5. CONCLUSIONS

In this present paper, the simulation of fully nonlinear water waves in a two-dimensional
numerical wave tank is successfully studied within the frame of potential flow. The problem
of velocity potential with initial boundary value is outlined, and some specific numerical
implementations are introduced in detail. The desingularized boundary integral equation
method is employed to solve the potential flow boundary value problem at each time step
and the fourth-order predictor-corrector method of Adams-Bashforth-Moulton is adopted for
the time-stepping integration of the free surface boundary conditions. The position of
instantaneous free surface is tracked by applying semi-Mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian approach,
in which the horizontal motion of the fluid particles on the free surface held fixed. A

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damping layer before the end-wall of wave tank is added to make the outgoing waves be
absorbed with as little wave reflection into the wave tank as possible. The numerical saw-
tooth instability is removed by using a five-point Chebyshev smoothing scheme during the
simulation. The present numerical model in this paper is verified against several cases of
fully nonlinear water waves including the wave propagation and wave diffraction by a
submerged horizontal circular cylinder in a two-dimensional wave tank. All the numerical
results are generally in very good agreements with those of analytical solutions or
experimental data. The applications of this present mathematic model to three-dimensional
numerical wave tank and to predict the dynamic behavior of such surface-piercing and freely
floating offshore structures due to nonlinear waves are in progress.

6. REFERENCES

1. Baudic, S.F., Williams A.N., Kareem A., 2001. A two-dimensional numerical wave
flume-part 1: nonlinear wave generation, propagation and absorption. Journal of
Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering, 123, 70-75.
2. Beck, R.F., 1994. Time-domain computations for floating bodies. Applied Ocean
Research, 16, 267-282.
3. Boo, S.Y., 2002. Linear and nonlinear irregular waves and forces in a numerical wave
tank. Ocean Engineering, 29(5), 475~493.
4. Boo, S.Y., Kim, C.H., Kim, M.H., 1994. A numerical wave tank for nonlinear irregular
waves by 3D HOBEM, Journal of Offshore and Polar Engineering, 4 (4), 265~272.
5. Cao, Y., Schultz, W.W., Beck, R.F., 1991. Three dimensional desingularized boundary
integral methods for potential problems. International Journal of Numerical Methods in
Fluids, 12, 785-803.
6. Celebi, M.S., 2001. Nonlinear transient wave-body interactions in steady uniform
currents. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 190,5149~5172.
7. Celebi, M.S., Kim, M.H., Beck, R.F., 1998. Fully nonlinear 3-D numerical wave tank
simulation. Journal of Ship Research, 42 (1), 33-45.
8. Chaplin, J.R., 1984. Nonlinear forces on a horizontal cylinder beneath waves. Journal of
Fluid Mechanics, 147, 449-464.
9. Clement, A.H., 1996. Coupling of two absorbing boundary conditions for 2D time-
domain simulations of free surface gravity waves. Journal of Computational Physics,
126, 139-151.
10. Contento, G., 2000. Numerical wave tank computations of nonlinear motions of two-
dimensional arbitrarily shaped free floating bodies, Ocean Engineering, 27 (5), 531-556.
11. Contento, G., Codiglia, R., D'Este, F., 2001. Nonlinear effects in 2D transient
nonbreaking waves in a closed flume. Applied Ocean Research, 23 (1),3-13.
12. Grilli, S.T., Horrillo, J., 1997. Numerical generation and absorption of fully nonlinear
periodic waves. Journal of Engineering Mechanics, 123, 1060-1069.
13. Grilli, S.T., Skourup, J., Svendsen, I.A., 1989. An efficient boundary element for
nonlinear water waves. Engineering Analysis with Boundary Elements, 6, 97-107.
14. Ferrant, P., Le Touze, D., Pelletier, K., 2003. Non-linear time-domain models for
irregular wave diffraction about offshore structures. International Journal for Numerical
Methods in Fluids, 43 (10-11), 1257-1277.
15. Kim, C.H., Clement, A.H., Tanizawa, K., 1999. Recent research and development of
numerical wave tanks- a review. International Journal of Offshore and Polar
Engineering, 9 (4), 241-256.
16. Koo, W.C., Kim, M.H., Tavassoli, A., 2004. Fully nonlinear wave-body interactions
with fully submerged dual cylinders. International Journal of Offshore and Polar
Engineering, 14 (3), 210-217.
17. Li, B., Fleming, C.A., 2001. Three-dimensional model of Navier-Stokes equations for
water waves. Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal and Ocean Engineering, 127 (1), 16-
25.

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18. Liu, Y.M., Dommermuth, D.G., Yue, D.K.P., 1992. A high-order spectral method for
nonlinear wave-body interactions. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 245, 115-136.
19. Longuet-Higgins, M.S., Cokelet, C.D., 1976. The deformation of steep surface waves on
water: I-A numerical method of computation. Proceedings of the Royal Society of
London,Ser.A, 350,1~26.

AUTHORS’ BIOGRAPHY

Dr.Lou Jing received his BSc. (1980-1984) and MSc. (1984-1987) from
Ocean University of China. He obtained his Ph.D. (1992-1996) from James
Cook University, Australia.
Dr.Lou received several awards, namely, the Merit Research Grants (1994
& 1995) from Australian Research Council; Equity and Merit Scholarship
(1992-1996) from the Australian Agency of International Development;
U.S. National Research Council Research Associate Award (1997-1999);
and the National Key Research Project Award (1990) from CNSF.
Dr.Lou is a Research Scientist at the Institute of High Performance
Computing, Singapore, since 1999. He worked in the NOAA/Great Lakes
Environmental Research Laboratory, USA, as a NRC Resident Research
Associate from 1997-99. He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the
Institute of Hydrophysics, GKSS National Research Centre, Germany from 1996-97. From 1987-92,
he was an assistant professor at the Institute of Physical Oceanography, Ocean University of China.
Dr.Lou’s current areas of research include: Multiphase flow modeling; Fluid-structure interaction;
Non-linear wave-current interaction; Turbulence and thermal transfer; and pollution/environment
modeling. Dr.Lou has published numerous international journal papers and conference papers.

Khoo Boo Cheong is an Associate Professor at the Department of

Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore (NUS).
Associate Professor Khoo received his BA Hons. (1980) from the
University of Cambridge, MEng (1984) from NUS and PhD (1988) from
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research areas are near-wall
hot-wire (turbulence) measurements, bubble dynamics and under water
shock, and CFD, numerical methods, and transport across turbulent gas-
liquid interface.
Associate Professor Khoo has received the Defence Technology Prize
awarded by MINDEF for Underwater Shock Technology (1998) and the
Literati Awards for Excellence for paper in Int. J. Num. Meth. For Heat
and Fluid Flow (1999).

Dr. Zhang obtained his Ph.D. from Wuhan University of Technology,

China in 2002. He worked at the State Key Laboratory of Coastal and
Offshore Engineering, Dalian University of Technology as a research
assistant from 2002 to 2004. Before he joined in NUS as a post-doctoral
research fellow in 2004, he visited the Department of Engineering Science,
Oxford University to carry out a UK-China joint project. Currently, his
research is mainly focused on the numerical simulation of nonlinear free
surface flows in naval architecture and ocean engineering.

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