A 3-DIMENSIONAL PANEL METHOD FOR NONLINEAR FREE-SURFACE WAVES ON VECTOR COMPUTERS

A number of recent improvements in a higher-order three-dimensional (3D) panel method for highly nonlinear free surface wave simulations is discussed. Special attention is paid to grid evolution techniques, and stability of the time-dependent problem. Due to the improvements, stable and accurate results can be obtained for linear and highly nonlinear wave problems. Although no artificial smoothing is applied, even extreme problems like the development of breaking waves in a 3D configuration can be simulated. The computer code has been specially developed for implementation on a vector computer. The program is highly vectorized, and use is made of mathematical libraries for acceptable CPU-times.