Modelling physical wave tank with flap paddle and porous beach in OpenFOAM

The capability of a numerical model to mimic the operation of a physical wave tank allows us to carry out complementary numerical tests to explore various aspects or to investigate the insights of the physical tests, which are otherwise not feasible with limited measured data. The numerical model could also be extended beyond the physical limitation of a laboratory facility, such as “full-scale” tests with realistic conditions at lower cost and shorter turnaround time. In this paper, we present a construction of such a numerical model of a physical wave tank with flap paddles and porous beaches. The model is built based on the Navier-Stokes solver and the Volume of Fluids method in the open-source software Open Field Operation and Manipulation (OpenFOAM). The paddles and the beaches are explicitly modelled to mimic the behaviours of the physical counterparts in the tank. High quality laboratory experiments of regular and focused waves were conducted for the validation of the numerical model. Extension of the numerical model to a three-dimensional wave tank with individually controlled paddles is also demonstrated.