A coupled numerical model of wave interaction with porous medium

A new coupling model of wave interaction with porous medium is established in which the wave field solver is based on the two dimensional Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with a k epsilon. closure. Incident waves, which could be linear waves, cnoidal waves or solitary waves, are produced by a piston-type wave maker in the computational domain and the free surface is traced through the Piecewise Linear Interface Construction-Volume of Fluid (PLIC-VOF) method. Nonlinear Forchheimer equations are adopted to calculate the flow field within the porous media. By introducing a velocity-pressure correction equation, the wave field and the porous flow field are highly and efficiently coupled. The two fields are solved simultaneously and no boundary condition is needed at the interface of the internal porous flow and the external wave. The newly developed numerical model is used to simulate wave interaction with porous seabed and the numerical results agree well with the experimental data. The additional numerical tests are also conducted to study the effects of seabed thickness, porosity and permeability coefficient on wave damping and the pore water pressure responses. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.