A numerical model for wave motions and turbulence flows in front of a composite breakwater

A mathematical model based on the Volume-Averaged/Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (VARANS) equations is developed to describe surface wave motions in the vicinity of a coastal structure, which could be either a rigid solid structure or a permeable structure or a combination of both. In the VARANS equations, the volume-averaged Reynolds stress is modeled by adopting the nonlinear eddy viscosity assumption. The model equations for the volume-averaged turbulent kinetic energy and its dissipation rate are derived by taking the volume-average of the standard k−ϵ equations. Because of the volume-averaging process, the effects of the small-scale turbulence in porous media are introduced. The performance of the model is checked by comparing numerical solutions with the experimental data related to a composite breakwater reported by Sakakiyama and Liu [Coast. Eng. 121 (2001) 117].     

Numerical study on evolution of an internal solitary wave across an idealized shelf with different front slopes

Numerical simulations are performed to investigate the influence of variable front slopes on flow evolution and waveform inversion of a depression ISW (internal solitary wave) over an idealized shelf with variable front slopes. A finite volume based on Cartesian grid method is adopted to solve the Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equations using a k-ε model for the turbulent closure. Numerical results exhibit the variations of several pertinent properties of the flow field, in the case with or without waveform inversion on the horizontal plateau of an obstacle. The clockwise vortex is stronger than the counterclockwise one, almost throughout the wave-obstacle interaction. Analysis of the turbulent energy budget reveals that the turbulent production term in the governing equations dominates the wave evolution during a wave-obstacle interaction; otherwise the buoyancy production term and the dissipation term due to viscosity within turbulent eddies play a major role in energy dissipation. In addition, the front slope affects mainly the process and reflection of the wave evolution but has less influence than other physical parameters. Moreover, total wave energy of the leading crest is smaller than that of the leading trough even in the cases with waveform inversion on the plateau.     

潜堤上破碎波浪传播变形的数值模型及其验证

为模拟潜堤上破碎波浪传播时产生能量的耗散这一特性,在改进的具有四阶色散的Boussinesq水波方程中中入二阶紊动粘性项,建立了考虑波浪破碎的水波数学模型.在非交错网格下建立了有限差分数值模型,并利用三阶Adams-Bash forth格式预报、四阶Adams-Mouton格式校正对数值模型进行求解.通过数值试验,模拟...     

Propagation of solitary waves over a submerged permeable breakwater

We study the interactions between a non-breaking solitary wave and a submerged permeable breakwater experimentally and numerically. The particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique is employed to measure instantaneous free surface displacements and velocity fields in the vicinity of a porous dike. The porous medium, consisting of uniform glass spheres, is mounted on the seafloor. Due to the limited size of each field of view (FOV) for high spatial resolution purposes, four FOVs are set in order to form a continuous flow field around the structure. Quantitative mean properties are obtained by ensemble averaging 30 repeated instantaneous measurements. The Reynolds decomposition method is then adopted to separate the velocity fluctuations for each trial to estimate the turbulent kinetic energy. In addition, a highly accurate two-dimensional model with the volume of fluid interface tracking technique is used to simulate an idealized volume-averaged porous medium. The model is based on the Volume-Averaged Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes equations coupled with the non-linear k–ε turbulence closure solver. Comparisons are performed between measurements and numerical results for the time histories of the free surface elevation recorded by wave gauges and the spatial distributions of free surface displacement with the corresponding velocity and turbulent kinetic energy around the permeable object imaged by the PIV system. Fairly good agreements are obtained. It is found that the measured and modeled turbulent intensities on the weather side are much larger than those on the lee side of the object, and that the magnitude of the turbulent intensity increases with increasing wave height of a solitary wave at a constant water depth. The verified numerical model is then used to estimate the energy reflection, transmission and dissipation using the energy integral method by varying the aspect ratio and the grain size of the permeable obstacle.     

Numerical simulation of wave interaction with porous structures using an improved smoothed particle hydrodynamic method

A smoothed particle hydrodynamic (SPH) model is developed to simulate wave interaction with porous structures. The mean flow outside the porous structures is obtained by solving Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations and the turbulence field is calculated by a large eddy simulation (LES) model. The porous flow is described by the spatially averaged Navier–Stokes type equations with the resistance effect of the porous media being represented by an empirical frictional source term. The interface boundaries between the porous flow and the outside flow are modeled by means of specifying a transition zone along the interface. The model is validated against other available numerical results and experimental data for wave damping over porous seabed with different levels of permeability. The validated model is then employed to investigate wave breaking over a submerged porous breakwater and good agreements between the SPH model results and the experimental data are obtained in terms of free surface displacement. In addition the predicted velocity, vorticity and pressure fields near the porous breakwater and in the breaking wave zone are also analyzed.     

聚焦波作用下透水潜堤消波特性数值模拟研究

基于非静压数值计算模型,本文系统研究了聚焦波作用下透水潜堤的消波特性,通过设置合理的计算工况,详细分析了波高、堤顶水深、谱峰周期、孔隙率以及堤顶宽度5种因素对透水潜堤消波特性的影响。与此同时,本文将透水潜堤的计算结果同不透水潜堤的计算结果进行了对比分析。计算结果表明:透水潜堤对聚焦波的消减作用要强于不透水潜堤,从而说明,透水潜堤能更有效地降低畸形波对海岸基础设施的影响;波高和堤顶水深是影响潜堤消波特性的重要因素,随入射波高增加、堤顶水深减小,透水潜堤对波浪的消减作用逐渐增强。透水潜堤对长周期波浪的消波效果较差。在本文考虑的孔隙率范围内,孔隙率越大,透水潜堤消波效果越好;当孔隙率为0.4,堤顶宽度为0.612 5 m时,透水潜堤可消减54%的入射波能,比不透水潜堤对入射波能的消减增加36.1%。本文研究结果可为进一步认识透水潜堤的消波特性和海岸防护工程设计提供相应的参考。     

Wave–current interaction with a vertical square cylinder

A three-dimensional numerical model is developed in this study to investigate the problem of wave–current–body interaction. The model solves the spatially averaged Navier–Stokes equations. Turbulence effects are modeled by a subgrid-scale (SGS) model using the concept of large eddy simulation (LES). The model is employed to study the wave–current interaction with a square cylinder that is mounted on the bottom and vertically pierces the free surface. The force analysis demonstrates that the presence of waves can reduce both the strength and frequency of vortex shedding induced by a uniform current due to the nonlinear wave–current interaction. The free surface elevation, strain rates of the mean flow, and eddy viscosity are found to closely correlate with the mechanism of vortex shedding. It is also shown that when the vortex shedding is neglected in the calculation such as by the potential flow approach, one may significantly underestimate the magnitude of in-line force. The energy spectral analysis reveals that there exist initiating, growing, and decaying regions for shedding vortices around the cylinder. In the vortex initiating region, both coherent and turbulent structures are nearly two-dimensional that become three-dimensional in the vortex growing region. The kinetic energy of both coherent and turbulent motions is dissipated in the vortex decaying region, within which the mean flow gradually returns back to two-dimensional.     

Large-scale turbulence under a solitary wave

The structure of large-scale turbulence under a broken solitary wave on a 1 in 50 plane slope was studied. Three-component velocity measurements were taken at different heights above a smooth bed in the middle surf zone using an acoustic Doppler velocimeter. The measured data showed that turbulent velocity components were well correlated in the middle part of the water column. The velocity correlations could be produced by an oblique vortex similar to the obliquely descending eddy observed previously by other investigators. The vertical distributions of the relative values of the components of the Reynolds stress tensor showed that the structure of turbulence evolved continuously between the free surface and the bottom. The evolution was related to transition from two-dimensional to three-dimensional flow structures and the effect of the solid bottom on flow structures. Time histories of measured turbulent kinetic energy and turbulence stresses showed episodic turbulent events near the free surface but more sporadic turbulence in the lower layer. Large or intense turbulent events were found to have short duration and time lag relative to the wave crest point. These events also maintained good correlations between the turbulence velocity components close to the bottom.Instantaneous turbulent velocity fields were measured near the bottom at the same cross-shore location by using a stereoscopic particle image velocimetry system. These measurements showed that the near-bed flow field was characterized by large-scale, coherent flow structures that were the sources of most of the turbulent kinetic energy and turbulence stresses. The types of organized flow structures observed included vortices and downbursts of turbulence descending directly from above, lateral spreading of turbulent fluid along the bed, and formation of vortices in shear layers between fluid streams. A common feature of the organized flow structures near the bed was the large turbulence velocities in the longitudinal and transverse directions, which reflected the influence of a solid bottom on the breaking-wave-generated turbulence arriving at the bed.     

Modeling of the eddy viscosity by breaking waves

Breaking wave induced nearsurface turbulence has important consequences for many physical and biochemical processes including water column and nutrients mixing,heat and gases exchange across air-sea interface.The energy loss from wave breaking and the bubble plume penetration depth are estimated.As a consequence,the vertical distribution of the turbulent kinetic energy(TKE),the TKE dissipation rate and the eddy viscosity induced by wave breaking are also provided.It is indicated that model results are found to be consistent with the observational evidence that most TKE generated by wave breaking is lost within a depth of a few meters near the sea surface.High turbulence level with intensities of eddy viscosity induced by breaking is nearly four orders larger than υwl(=κuwz),the value predicted for the wall layer scaling close to the surface,where uw is the friction velocity in water,κ with 0.4 is the von Kármán constant,and z is the water depth,and the strength of the eddy viscosity depends both on wind speed and sea state,and decays rapidly through the depth.This leads to the conclusion that the breaking wave induced vertical mixing is mainly limited to the near surface layer,well above the classical values expected from the similarity theory.Deeper down,however,the effects of wave breaking on the vertical mixing become less important.     

Large Eddy Simulation for Wave Breaking in the Surf Zone

In this paper, (he large eddy simulation method is used combined with the marker and cell method to study the wave propagation or shoaling and breaking process. As wave propagates into shallow water, the shoaling leads lo the increase of wave height, and then at a certain position, the wave will be breaking. The breaking wave is a powerful agent for generating turbulence, which plays an important role in most of the fluid dynamic processes throughout the surf zone, such as transformation of wave energy, generation of near-shore current and diffusion of materials. So a proper numerical model for describing the turbulence effect is needed. In this paper, a revised Smagorinsky subgrid-scale mode! is used to describe the turbulence effect. The present study reveals that the coefficient of the Smagorinsky model for wave propagation or breaking simulation may be taken as a varying function of the water depth and distance away from the wave breaking point. The large eddy simulation model presented in this pape     

Bottom friction and its effects on periodic long wave propagation

A new set of Boussinesq-type equations describing the free surface evolution and the corresponding depth-integrated horizontal velocity is derived with the bottom boundary layer effects included. Inside the boundary layer the eddy viscosity gradient model is employed to characterize Reynolds stresses and the eddy viscosity is further approximated as a linear function of the distance measured from the seafloor. Boundary-layer velocities are coupled with the irrotational velocity in the core region through boundary conditions. The leading order boundary layer effects on wave propagation appear in the depth-integrated continuity equation to account for the velocity deficit inside the boundary layer. This formulation is different from the conventional approach in which a bottom stress term is inserted in the momentum equation. An iterative scheme is developed to solve the new model equations for the free surface elevation, depth-integrated velocity, the bottom stress, the boundary layer thickness and the magnitude of the turbulent eddy viscosity. A numerical example for the evolution of periodic waves propagating in one-dimensional channel is discussed to illustrate the numerical procedure and physics involved. The differences between the conventional approach and the present formulation are discussed in terms of the bottom frictional stress and the free surface profiles.     

Effects of Stokes production on summer ocean shelf dynamics

A two-dimensional numerical model,which is configured on the basis of Princeton ocean model（POM）,is used to study the effect of Stokes production（SP） of the turbulent kinetic energy on a density profile and Ekman transport in an idealized shelf region in summer.The energy input from SP is parameterized and included into the Mellor-Yamada turbulence closure submodel.Results reveal that the intensity of wind-driven upwelling fronts near the sea surface is weakened by the SP-associated turbulent kinetic energy input.The vertical eddy viscosity coefficient in the surface boundary layer is enhanced greatly owing to the impact of SP,which decreases the alongshore velocity and changes the distribution of upwelling.In addition,the SP-induced mixing easily suppresses the strong stratification and significantly increases the depth of the upper mixed layer（ML） under strong winds.     

Study of the Neutral Ekman Flow Using an Algebraic Reynolds Stress Model

A recently developed fully explicit algebraic model of Reynolds stress and turbulent heat flux in a thermally stratified planetary atmospheric boundary layer without stratification has been used for a numerical study of the Ekman turbulent boundary layer over a homogeneous rough surface for different dimensionless surface Rossby numbers. A comparative analysis has been conducted for a closure model of the transport term in the prognostic equation of turbulent kinetic energy dissipation including third-order moments. Dependences of the total wind rotation angle on the Rossby number have been obtained. The calculated vertical profiles of mean velocity, turbulent stress, turbulent kinetic energy, surface-friction velocity, and boundary-layer height agree satisfactorily with observational and earlier obtained LES data.     

Estimating the characteristics of the vertical turbulent viscosity in the upper 200-m layer of the Black Sea

The influence of high vertical velocity gradients in the Black Sea Rim Current on the intensity of the vertical turbulent exchange is demonstrated on the basis of numerical modeling based on CTD data. The vertical turbulent exchange is confirmed by the anomalous distribution of the hydrochemical parameters in the redox layer. A system of equations for the kinetic energy of the turbulence and dissipation rate (k-? model) is used for the calculation of the coefficient of the vertical turbulent viscosity (diffusivity).     

Shock-capturing Boussinesq-type model for nearshore wave processes

This paper describes the formulation and validation of a nearshore wave model for tropical coastal environment. The governing Boussinesq-type equations include the conservative form of the nonlinear shallow-water equations for shock capturing. A Riemann solver supplies the inter-cell flux and bathymetry source term, while a Godunov-type scheme integrates the evolution variables in time. The model handles wave breaking through momentum conservation with energy dissipation based on an eddy viscosity concept. The computed results show very good agreement with laboratory data for wave propagation over a submerged bar, wave breaking and runup on plane beaches as well as wave transformation over fringing reefs. The model accurately describes transition between supercritical and subcritical flows as well as development of dispersive waves in the processes.     

Wave deformation and vortex generation in water waves propagating over a submerged dike

The Navier–Stokes equations and the exact free surface boundary conditions are solved to simulate wave deformation and vortex generation in water waves propagating over a submerged dike. Incident waves are generated by a piston-type wavemaker set up in the computational domain. Numerical results are compared with experimental data in order to confirm the validity of the numerical model. The fast Fourier transform and a wave resolution technique are applied to decompose the transformed waves and the higher harmonics. Effects of different parameters on wave transformation and vortex generation are studied systematically. These parameters include the Ursell number, the Keulegan–Carpenter number, the water depth ratio, the Reynolds number, the length aspect ratio of the dike, and the type of dike.     

Calculation of wave-induced turbulent flows in estuaries

The k-ε turbulence model which relates the eddy viscosity to turbulent kinetic energy, k, and to the rate of its dissipation, ε, and determines the distribution of these two quantities from modeled transport equations, is employed in calculating the vertical structure of wave-induced turbulent flows in two-dimensional estuaries. The empirical constants in this model are given the standard values cited in the literature and used successfully for calculating a large variety of steady flows; they are not tuned to the oscillating flows. The free surface elevation and the eddy-viscosity distribution are also calculated as a part of the solution. First, calculations performed for oscillatory laminar flows are compared with analytic solutions to ensure the proper performance of the numerical scheme. The turbulent flow in a laboratory-estuary model with one end closed, and in the Humber Estuary is simulated with the numerical model, and the results are compared with the corresponding flume and field measurements. The influence of frequency and roughness is thereby investigated. The results indicate that the time and space variation of the velocity field and the phase lag between the surface slope and the horizontal velocity can be predicted satisfactorily in wave-induced turbulent flows.     

Numerical study on vertical structures of undertow inside and outside the surf zone

Nearshore shoaling and breaking waves can drive a complex circulation system of wave-induced currents. In the cross-shore direction, the local vertical imbalance between the gradient of radiation stress and that of pressure due to the setup drives an offshore flow near the bottom, called ‘undertow’, which plays a significant role in the beach profile evolution and the structure stability in coastal regions. A 1DV undertow model was developed based on the relationship between the turbulent shear stress and t...     

Using RANS to simulate vortex generation and dissipation around impermeable submerged double breakwaters

In this paper, a Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) model was developed to simulate the vortex generation and dissipation caused by progressive waves passing over impermeable submerged double breakwaters. The dynamics of the turbulence are described by introducing a k–ɛ model with Boussinesq closure. The Height Function (HF) is implemented to define the free-surface configuration. The governing equations are discretized by means of a finite volume method based on a staggered grid system with variable width and height. The feasibility of the numerical model was verified through a series of comparisons of numerical results with the existing analytical solutions and the experimental data. The good agreements demonstrate the satisfactory performance of the developed numerical model. The flow separation mechanism both near the upstream and the downstream edges of the obstacles demonstrates the physical and expected nature of development of the flow. The present model provides an accurate and efficient tool for the simulation of flow field and wave transformation near coastal structures without breaking.