Proceedings of the Thirty-second (2022) International Ocean and Polar Engineering ConferenceShanghai, China, June 5–10, 2022
Copyright © 2022 by the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE)
ISBN 978-1-880653-81-4; ISSN 1098-6189

www.isope.org

Establishment and Convergent Study of 3D Numerical Wave Tank
Siwen Zhang1, Qiutong Tan1, Gang Xu1,2
1 School of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang, China
2Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Zhuhai, China

Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province, China

ABSTRACTactual conditions.
Physical wave tank is an important experimental facility in the field ofship and ocean engineering, which can provide efficient technicalsupport for the study of hydrodynamic performance of ship and oceanengineering. However, the use of physical experiments requires a lot ofmaterial and financial resources, and the experimental period is long.
There are still many problems in the simulation and elimination ofirregular waves (2007). With the integration and development ofcomputer and CFD technology, the mutual coupling between numericalsimulation wave and floating structure can be realized. Wave theory isoften used in numerical simulation to generate and eliminate waves,and detailed flow field information can be obtained.

CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) technology is widely used inship, port and ocean engineering field. The numerical wave tank basedon CFD can avoid the error in the actual experiment, and has theadvantages of low cost, high flexibility, etc., compared with thephysical wave tank. Stable and accurate simulation of nonlinear waves(approximate real sea conditions) in numerical wave tanks is theprimary task of related research. In this paper, a 3D numerical wave
tank is established based on ANSYS FLUENT, and the convergence
analysis of the tank is carried out for the simulation of nonlinear waves.
By exploring and analyzing the factors affecting the accuracy ofnumerical wave simulation such as grid division and time step, theappropriate numerical simulation method is obtained under the premiseof ensuring the computational efficiency. This method can provide
guidance for related nonlinear wave numerical tank simulation research.

1.1 Numerical wave generating
Ursell et al. (1960) first used the numerical piston wave-making
method based on the potential flow theory for numerical wave-making,and this simulation method was later referred and developed byresearchers. Peter and Julien (1999) firstly used the VOF method toeliminate the reflected wave by simultaneously using push-plate wave
making and eliminating wave. Prasad (2018) simulated regular waves
by push-plate method based on ANSYS CFX module, and verified theaccuracy of numerical simulation combined with experimental results.
Li (2019) used the secondary development function of FLUENT toapply the Schaffer second-order wave-making theory in physicalexperiments to numerical wave simulation, and realized the numericalsimulation of dual-frequency wave based on the second-order pushwave plate wave-making method. Liu (2015) based on OpenFOAM
software platform by adding quality source and setting wave boundary
two different ways to achieve the wave. Yu (2019) established aviscous numerical wave tank on the OpenFOAM platform based on thewave-making theory of push plate and the wave-making theory of rockplate, and used the PIMPLE algorithm to solve the numerical model.
The regular wave and the second-order finite amplitude wave wereconsistent with the theoretical results and the experimental results,
which verified the accuracy of wave-making and wave elimination of
the numerical wave tank. From previous studies, the wave-making
effect of the physical wave-making technology based on the N-Sequation for regular and irregular waves is accurate and reliable, which
can meet the needs of research.

KEY WORDS: CFD; Numerical wave tank; Nonlinear wave;
Convergent study

1.Introduction
Many important issues involved in ocean engineering are related towaves. As the main load considered in ship and ocean engineering,waves have always been the difficulty of research. Therefore, studying
the law of wave motion has important significance. Physical wave
tanks have always been an important tool for studying the effects ofwaves and ocean structures, but their high cost and serious scale effects
have restricted their use.
With the development of computer performance, using computers astools to simulate fluid flow with numerical methods has gradually
become more and more important. The use of computers to developnumerical wave tanks to study the interaction between waves andstructures has gradually become one of the mainstream research
directions. Among them, the boundary element method based on thepotential flow theory is widely used in the interaction of waves andocean structures, but the potential flow method ignores the influence offluid viscosity. Therefore, most of the numerical wave tanks at thisstage are based on the theory of viscous flow, considering the impact ofthe viscous flow effect, to better simulate the law of wave motion under2514