Numerical Simulation of Wave Slamming on a Flap-Type Oscillating Wave Energy Device

This paper presents the numerical investigations of an oscillating wave surge converter (OWSC) operating in extreme sea states leading to slamming. We use the open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) library OpenFOAM to carry out the two-dimensional numerical simulations. A preliminary study is done to verify the convergence of our results, while scalability tests confirm the high-performance computing capabilities of OpenFOAM and the possibility of extending this study to large three-dimensional configurations. The OWSC device is simulated with both incompressible and compressible solvers, and the results are compared against previous numerical and experimental results. It is shown that an incompressible solver can capture the dynamics and general behavior of the flap device. Nevertheless, the compressibility effects can be reproduced only with the aid of a compressible solver, which takes into account the density changes in the air and water phases. Those effects produce high-frequency, small oscillations on the seaward side of the flap but do not contribute to further increasing the peak pressure values characteristic of slamming.