Experimental and numerical study of regular waves past a submerged breakwater

Laboratory experiments are performed to investigate the hydrodynamics around a submerged breakwater due to regular incident waves. With an in-house code, a constrained interpolation profile (CIP)-based model is employed to simulate this process. The model is built on a Cartesian grid system with the Navier-Stokes equations using a CIP method for the flow solver and an immersed boundary method (IBM) is used for the treatment of the solid body boundary. A more accurate interface capturing scheme, the tangent of hyperbola for interface capturing/slope weighting (THINC/SW) scheme, is used to track the free surface. The numerical results are compared with experimental data. Reasonably good agreement is achieved in terms of the wave profiles at six measuring stations, the flow velocities at three different space locations and the pressures of eight points on the surface of the submerged breakwater. Moreover, the water mass transfer over the breakwater is discussed using a two-phase VOF model and the wave spectrum is also presented for analysis. It is indicated that the present model can accurately predict the hydrodynamic characteristics of the wave over a submerged bar. Furthermore, the experimental data in the present work can provide reliable basic data, including the wave transformations, the velocities and the dynamic pressures, for the validation of other CFD models.