Recent research and development of numerical wave tanks - a review

Abstract

This paper presents a review of recent progress of numerical wave tank (NWT) research and development. A wide variety of 2-D and 3-D NWT have been developed for simulating wave, diffraction, radiation, floating body motion and other related topics. The review focuses on the development of NWT similar to experimental wave tanks (EWT). Although the viscous flow NWT is equally as important as the ideal fluid NWT, the present review is centered on the latter. It includes typical formulations, numerical implementations, methods of wave generation and wave damping and absorbing, wave-wave interaction, diffraction, radiation and floating body motion. A comment on the viscous flow NWT is given in the concluding remarks.