Vortex shedding around a near-wall circular cylinder induced by a solitary wave

This study developed a two-dimensional generalized vortex method to analyze the shedding of vortices and the hydrodynamic forces resulting from a solitary wave passing over a submerged circular cylinder placed near a flat seabed. Numerical results for validation are compared with other numerical and experimental results, and satisfactory agreement is found. A series of simulations were performed to study the effects of gap-to-diameter ratio and incident wave height on vorticity pattern as well as the forces exerted on the cylinder. The range of the heights of incident waves is from 0.3h to 0.7h, where h is the still water depth. The range of the gap-to-diameter ratios is from 0.1 to 0.8. The results indicate that the flow pattern and the pressure distribution change significantly because of the close proximity of the seabed where the vorticity flux on the seabed-side surface of the cylinder is suppressed. Placing the cylinder nearer the seabed increases the drag and the positive lift on the cylinder. When the gap-to-diameter ratio increases, the pattern of vortices changes because of the interaction between the main recirculation zone and the shear layers separated from the gap. The maxima of drag, lift and total force increase linearly with the height of the incident wave.