Numerical study of resonance induced by wave action on multiple rectangular boxes with narrow gaps

By introducing a source term into the Laplace equation, a two-dimensional fully nonlinear time-domain numerical wave flume (NWF) is developed to investigate the resonance induced by the interaction between waves and multiple objects with narrow gaps. In the numerical model, the fully nonlinear kinematic and dynamic boundary conditions are satisfied on the instantaneous free surface and the constant artificial damping is employed in the gaps to approximate the viscous dissipation due to vortex motion and flow separation. The computational domain is discretized using a higher-order boundary element method (HOBEM). The proposed model is firstly validated against the published experimental data and numerical results of the wave height in the narrow gap between two boxes, the wave heights in the two gaps of three boxes, and wave loads on the boxes. Then, the extensive numerical experiments are performed to study the influences of the number of the boxes and the gap spacing on the resonant frequency, reflected and transmitted wave heights and wave loads on the boxes.