A two-phase flow model is addressed in this study to investigate effects of wind on breaking solitary waves, by solving the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations simultaneously for the flows both in the air and water, in which the free surface is calculated by the Volume-of-Fluid (VOF) method. First, the proposed model is validated with the experiment by Synolakis [1] of a breaking solitary wave without wind on a 1 : 19.85 impermeable beach. Then the wind effects are taken into account for modelling breaking solitary waves and it is found that the wind alters the air flow structure above the water wave; affects the wave breaking and runup process; increases the velocity in the water and causes the waves to break earlier, which agrees with previous laboratory experiment by Douglass [2].

Volume Subject Area:
C.C. Mei Symposium on Wave Mechanics and Hydrodynamics
Topics:
Computer simulation, Navier-Stokes equations, Waves, Wind, Water, Air flow, Flow (Dynamics), Fluids, Modeling, Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations, Two-phase flow, Water waves
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