2019 8th International Conference on Modeling Simulation and Applied Optimization (ICMSAO)

Numerical Analysis of an Absorbing Boundary

Condition Applied to the Free Surface Water
Waves Using the Method of Fundamental
Solutions

Mohamed LOUKILI Soumia MORDANE

Polymer Physics and Critical Phenomena Laboratory Polymer Physics and Critical Phenomena Laboratory
Faculty of Sciences Ben M’sik, P.O.BOX 7955 Faculty of Sciences Ben M’sik, P.O.BOX 7955
University Hassan II University Hassan II
Casablanca, Morocco. Casablanca, Morocco.
md.loukili@gmail.com soumiamordane@yahoo.fr

Abstract--- In this paper, a meshfree numerical After the literature reviews presented above,
wave tank (NWT) was proposed with: absorbing our objective in this work is not to investigate on the
boundary, partial reflection, and full reflection absorption conditions. Our interest is to establish a
boundary condition. The numerical analysis and numerical boundary condition that can be used to
the problem studied are treated by the method of study the waves field for harbours with an arbitrary
fundamental solutions (MFS). Our basic interest geometry. This condition is called partial reflection
in this work is to extend a new partial reflection boundary condition, which is extended from the
from the absorbing boundary condition, based on absorbing boundary condition. That is may required
actual present-day meshfree numerical method. to predict some hydrodynamics phenomena, like:
wave diffraction, reflection, amplification and
Keywords: Numerical wave tank, absorbing boundary, resonance of the incident waves.
Partial reflection, full reflection, MFS. .
II. Mathematical Model of the Physical Problem
I. Introduction
We consider a system of equations governing
The numerical analysis of the boundary
the problem of the NWT that is written as [8]:
conditions applied to the NWT, is one of the most
attractive, stimulating topics in coastal engineering.
∆ ( , )=0 on Ω (1)
Though there are many papers dealing with suitable
and feasible boundary conditions. When the waves, ( , ). = 0 on Γ (2)
( , )
flow from a region to other through a limit without − ( , )+ =0 on Γ (3)
returning, this condition is called: absorbing boundary ( ( ))
condition (ABC), were developed by the authors cited ( , )= on Γ (4)
( )
in the references [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. Clement [6], = ( = 0) on Γ (5)
further showed that Sommerfeld and Orlanski
radiation conditions are local in both space and time This problem is studied in the NWT, which
and, hence, cannot provide good results for unsteady is sketched as shown in the Fig.1.
incident waves. Based on his experimental work, this
condition is not useful in some cases: waves with
multiple components, unknown incident angle... .
Clement was proposed a boundary condition for
unsteady finite amplitude waves, this condition
becomes the best choice in terms of accuracy. Liu and
Sen [7] were proposed hybrid ABC, this condition
performs better than either pure sponge boundary or
the pure ABC.
Fig.1. Design of the domain of study

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 2019 8th International Conference on Modeling Simulation and Applied Optimization (ICMSAO)
A. Downstream Boundary Conditions
In this part, boundary conditions will be discussed.
Exactly, the absorbing boundary condition which has
been used to extended full reflection boundary and
partial reflection boundary conditions [9].
A.1. Absorbing Boundary and Reflected Boundary
Starting by the full reflection boundary, when a
boundary reflects the totality of the waves, this
boundary is identified with = 0 in the equation (6).
( , )
+ ik ( , ) = 0 (6)
When the waves flow from a region to other region
through a limit, and without returning to this limit.
This limit is identified as absorbing boundary,
where = 1.
A.2. Partial Reflection Boundary
The partial reflection boundary is formulated by
decomposing the velocity potential into two parts, the
incident wave and that of the reflected waves
as:
= + (7)
= + (8)
The velocity potential of the partial reflection
boundary is expressed as:
= (9)
=− (10)
From the equations (7-8) and (9-10) we obtain that:
= (11)
= (12)
We inject the equations (11) and (12) in the equation
(6) taken account the assumption of the open
boundary, we obtain the partial reflection boundary
condition as:
( , )
+ ik ( , ) = 0 (13)
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III. Numerical Formulation
The equations of motion presented above are
rewritten in reduced form as [10], [11]:
∆ ( , ) = 0 In Ω (14)
( , )
= g(x. y) Ω (15)
The fundamental solution used is expressed as:
( , )= G (16)
Where: G = ln
= x -β + y – δ +c : represents the
distance between the domain points and boundaries
points, as denoted in the Fig. 2.
=( , ) : is the location of domain points
- = , : is the boundary points position
- N : is the number of points in the boundaries
- c : is a parameter implemented to be free
from the ill-conditioning effect
- : represent the unknowns of the problem
To find , the collocation method is used in order to
find the potential (x,y) by the linear combination of
the fundamental solutions. Thereafter we find:
( , , ) by using the time descretization
expression = + ∆ , Where ∆ ≈ Δ
and Δ = , is the period, the wavelength and
is the length of the NWT, and thereafter the
elevation of the free surface = ( = 0) is
determined.
Fig.2. Field points (black symbols) and boundary points (green
symbols).
 2019 8th International Conference on Modeling Simulation and Applied Optimization (ICMSAO)

IV. Numerical Simulations and Discussions
In order to evaluate the efficiency of the
numerical model presented, the wave maker is
imposed at the left of the boundary of the NWT as
shown in the Fig. 1. And the hydrodynamics
parameters of the NWT and incident waves are
demonstrated in the Table 1. Two tests are exhibited
in the Figs. 3, and 4, along the NWT and along the
time series.

Table 1. The parameters of the NWT and incident waves

Example The The length of NWT The water depth Periods of the wave Total interpolation
1 wavelength. L(m) H(m) T(s) node numbers Nb
( )
Test 1 12 30 2.5 2.984 = 7725
Test 2 10 30 2.5 2.6440 = 8100

Fig.3. Numerical and analytical solutions along the NWT at t=2.5T (left), along with time series at x/L=0.75 (right), for the case of T=2.984s

Fig.4. Numerical and analytical solutions along the NWT at t=3T (left), along with time series at x/L=0.75 (right), for the case of T=2.644s

The numerical solutions proposed are evaluated by
comparing the analytical and numerical solution as
illustrated in the Fig.3 and 4.
The results show a good accord between the
analytical solution and the numerical solution (see the
Figs.3 and 4) when the parameter c is between [0.03
m -0.1 m].
A. Partial Reflection Boundary Analysis
The objective of this part is to examine the
validity of the partial reflection boundary condition
presented in this work. For that, we present in the
Fig.5 (a to d) the results with various reflection
coefficients R using parameters of the NWT and
incident wave, which are depicted in the Table 1 (test
2). The accuracy of the boundary condition presented

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 2019 8th International Conference on Modeling Simulation and Applied Optimization (ICMSAO)
is affirmed by our numerical experiments as shown in
Fig 5. The results illustrated in the Fig 5 with various
reflection coefficients R, show that when R = 0, the
elevation of the free surface takes the same profile of
the incident waves. As the reflection coefficient
increases the elevation of the free surface decreases.
(a)
(c)
Fig.5. Elevation of the free surface along the NWT at t=3T, for different cases of reflection coefficients, R (a) R=0.0, (b) R=0.4, (c) R=0.6, (d)
R=~1.
V. Conclusion
In this present work, boundary conditions are
discussed for wave analysis using the MFS method.
The problem of the gravity waves propagation is
accurately verified and examined by comparing the
analytical and the numerical solutions, the results are
stably acquired. The partial reflection boundary which
is extended from the open boundary condition is
validated by our numerical experiments. This
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When R = ~1, the elevation of the free surface takes
the same value of that of the full reflection.
These results seem to be perfectly logical
regarding the dynamics of the partial reflection of
waves, this results are proved in the reference [9]
using the boundary element method.
(b)
(d)
condition, it can be used to study the harbours with
arbitrary geometry, our interest in the future work is
to use the successful development of the numerical
wave tank proposed using the partial reflection
boundary condition to measure the reflection of an
arbitrary geometry.
 2019 8th International Conference on Modeling Simulation and Applied Optimization (ICMSAO)

References
[1] Sommerfeld, A., Partial Differential Equations in Physics.
Academic Press, New York, 1949.
[2] Le Mehaute, B., Progressive Wave Absorber. J. Hyd. Res.
10(2), 153-169, 1972.
[3] I. Orlanski, A simple boundary condition for unbounded
hyperbolic flows, J. Comput. Phys. 21 (1976) 251–269.
[4] Engquist, B. and Majda, A., Absorbing Boundary Conditions
for the Numerical Simulation of Waves. Math. Comp. 31, 629-651,
1977.
[5] Israeli, M. and Orszag, S.A., Approximation of Radiation
Boundary Conditions. J. Comp.
Phys. 41, 115-135, 1981.
[6] Clement, A., Coupling of Two Absorbing Boundary Conditions
for 2D Time-domain Simulations of Free Surface Gravity Waves.
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[7] Liu, Y., and Sen, M. K., 2012, A hybrid absorbing boundary
condition for elastic staggered-grid modeling: Geophysical
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[10] Loukili M., El Aarabi L., Mordane S. (2019) Computation of
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Algorithms in Intelligent Systems. CSOC2018 2018. Advances in
Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 763. Springer, Cham, doi:
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91186-1_44.

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