Simulation of Harmonic Waves Generated by the Piston-type Wave-maker in the Wave Flume via the Exponential Basis Functions Mesh-free Method and MEL Formulation

Abstract

In this article, a meshless method based on exponential basis functions (EBFs) is presented to simulate the harmonic waves with moving free-surfaces generated by the piston-type wave maker. Accordingly, velocity potential is adopted in a Mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian (MEL) approach. Boundary conditions are met through a point-wise collocation approach. In order to update the geometry in the simulation time, the free surface points are only moved vertically. To reduce the reflection in the wave flume, a damping zone is added at the far end opposite to the wave maker, where  the velocity is modified by adding an artificial damping term. The results indicated the ability of this numerical method in simulating free surface flow problems like non-linear waves with a good accuracy, as well as suitable performances and the least run time calculation.

Keywords

• Harmonic waves
• Piston-type wave maker
• Wave flume
• Mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian
• Exponential basis functions
• Meshless method.