Simulation of Solitary Breaking Waves Using a Two-Fluid Hybrid Turbulence Approach

A novel approach combining a two-fluid free surface solver and an efficient hybrid turbulence modelling technique has been presented for the simulation of breaking waves and their interaction with structures. The incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are solved by a cell centred finite volume method based on the artificial compressibility approach. The free surface (water/air interface) is treated as a contact discontinuity, which is captured automatically by Roe’s approximate Riemann solver. To simulate the effects of flow turbulence, a recently developed non-zonal hybrid LES/RANS method i.e. detached eddy simulation is implemented for the first time in the context of free surface modelling. To validate the numerical code, the two-dimensional Rayleigh-Taylor instability problem and the collapse of a water column in a tank are first simulated. Then a test case involving the run-up and breaking of a solitary wave along a slope is calculated and the results are compared with other relevant experimental work.