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A Flexible Fully Nonlinear Potential Flow Model for Wave Propagation over the Complex Topography of the Norwegian Coast

Abstract

Coastal wave propagation and transformation are complicated due to the significant variations of water depth and irregular coastlines, which are typically present at the Norwegian fjords. A potential flow model provides phase-resolved solutions with low demands on computational resources. Many potential flow models are developed for offshore waves and lack of numerical treatments of coastal conditions. In the presented work, several modifications are introduced to a fully nonlinear potential flow model with a -grid for the purpose of coastal wave modelling: Shallow water breaking criteria are included in addition to deepwater breaking algorithms to approximate breaking waves over a complete range of water depth. A new coastline algorithm is introduced to detect complex coastlines and ensure robust simulations near the coast. The algorithm is compatible with structured grid arrangement in the horizontal plane and allows for high-order discretisation schemes for the free surface boundary conditions for an accurate representation of complex free surfaces. A parallelised solver for the Laplace equation is utilised to ensure fast simulations for large domains with multi-core infrastructures.

The proposed model is validated against theories and experiments for various two- and three-dimensional nonlinear wave propagation and transformation cases that represent typical coastal conditions. The simulations show a good representation of nonlinear waves, and the results compare well with experiments. Furthermore, two large-scale engineering scenarios are simulated, where the applicability of the coastline algorithm and the parallel commutation capability of the model are demonstrated.
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Category

Academic article

Language

English

Author(s)

Affiliation

  • SINTEF Ocean / Skip og havkonstruksjoner
  • Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Year

2022

Published in

Applied Ocean Research

ISSN

0141-1187

Volume

122

View this publication at Norwegian Research Information Repository