A meshless numerical wave tank for simulation of nonlinear irregular waves in shallow water

Time domain simulation of the interaction between offshore structures and irregular waves in shallow water becomes a focus due to significant increase of liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals. To obtain the time series of irregular waves in shallow water, a numerical wave tank is developed by using the meshless method for simulation of 2D nonlinear irregular waves propagating from deep water to shallow water. Using the fundamental solution of Laplace equation as the radial basis function (RBF) and locating the source points outside the computational domain, the problem of water wave propagation is solved by collocation of boundary points. In order to improve the computation stability, both the incident wave elevation and velocity potential are applied to the wave generation. A sponge damping layer combined with the Sommerfeld radiation condition is used on the radiation boundary. The present model is applied to simulate the propagation of regular and irregular waves. The numerical results are validated by analytical solutions and experimental data and good agreements are observed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.