Accurate Computation of Wave Loads On A Bottom Fixed Circular Cylinder

Accurate computation of wave loads on a bottom xed circular
cylinder
B. T. Paulsen
,1
, H. Bredmose
, H. B. Bingham
Technical University of Denmark, Department of Mechanical Engineering,

Lyngby, Denmark
Technical University of Denmark, Department of Wind Energy, Lyngby, Denmark

E-mail: botp@mek.dtu.dk, hbr@mek.dtu.dk, hbb@mek.dtu.dk
Background
This abstract describes recent progress in the development of a fast and accurate tool for
computations of wave-structure interactions of realistic sea states that include breaking waves.
The practical motivation is extreme wave loads on oshore wind turbine foundations, but the
tool is applicable to a range of other problems.
The central idea is to drive an inner CFD model that resolves the ow around the structure
with an outer wave model that is based on potential ow theory. By letting the potential ow
solver describe the waves in the outer ow domain and the Navier-Stokes solver describe the
ow in the inner domain a fast and accurate description of wave loads on oshore structures is
obtained, even for breaking waves.
Engsig-Karup et. al [1] have recently developed a fully nonlinear potential ow solver
(OceanWave3D) to represent propagation and development of fully nonlinear three-dimensional
water waves up to the point of breaking.
The CFD solver is the open source CFD toolbox OpenFOAM R in combination with the
newly developed waves2Foam utility, which in [5] has been successfully applied to calculations of
free surface ows. The numerical solution is obtained by solving the incompressible Navier-Stokes
equations in combination with a surface tracking scheme. The CFD solver has been thoroughly
tested for stability and rst order grid convergence has been shown for the propagation of stream
function waves.
Here we present results for the magnitudes, of the third-harmonic forces on a vertical circular
cylinder from steep waves. This partly serves as a validation and further brings insight into
third-harmonic wave loads on cylinders which are relevant for ringing. Next, preliminary results
for the coupled model are presented in terms of irregular waves propagation and the associated
forces on a cylinder.
Higher-harmonic wave loads on a circular cylinder at nite water depth
With the use of the CFD model wave loads on a circular cylinder with radius, R = 3m, at a nite
water depth of h = 30m are investigated. The incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are solved
by a nite-volume method for the two-phase ow of water and air. A Volume of Fluid (VOF)
scheme is applied for the representation of the free surface. For all computations, regular two-
dimensional stream function waves [3] with wave number k, radian frequency and amplitude
A are applied as incident waves.
1
Presenting author
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
1.2
1.4
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45
T
h
i
r
d
-
h
a
r
m
o
n
i
c

f
o
r
c
e

-

f
(
3
)
/
g
A
1
3
kR
kA=0.20
kA=0.25
kA=0.30
kA=0.33
Huseby Grue - kA=0.19, h/R=20
Huseby Grue - kA=0.19, h/R=15
MM
FNV
Figure 1: The magnitude of the third-harmonic wave force on circular cylinder. Blue symbols indicate
third-harmonic forces from the numerical calculations. Red symbols indicate experimental results by
Huseby & Grue [4]. For all calculations h/R = 10
When the bottom mounted cylinder is exposed to a eld of incident waves, it is subjected to
a depth-integrated force, F(t), which can be written as,
F(t) =
f
(1)
e
it
+ f
(2)
e
i2t
+ f
(3)
e
i3t
+ . . .
(1)
where i =
1 is the complex unit and f

(j)
= f
(j)
(kh, kR, kA) is the magnitude of the jth force
component. The magnitude of the jth force component is made dimensionless by gA
3
1
where is
the density of water, g is the acceleration of gravity and A
1
is the rst component of the Fourier
series representing the incident free surface elevation, given by the stream function solution.
The numerically calculated third-harmonic force, f
(3)
, is presented in gure 1 as a function
of the relative cylinder diameter, kR. The theoretical results of Faltinsen, Newman and Vinje
(FNV) [2] and Malenica and Molin (MM) [7] are shown as a dashed and a solid line respectively.
Finally, in the gure, experimental results by Huseby & Grue [4] are shown for comparison. The
comparison with the experimental results is not complete since the relationship between the water
depth and the cylinder radius applied in the experiments was either h/R = 20 or h/R = 15, while
h/R = 10 was used in the numerical calculations and the results by MM. Notice that the only
results presented by MM are for h/R = 10. Therefore this ratio was adopted in the numerical
calculations to make a comparison possible. The analytic solution by FNV is formulated at
innite water depth and is therefore independent of the h/R-ratio.
In gure 1 a good agreement between the numerically predicted values of f
(3)
and the theories
by FNV and MM is seen for kR < 0.35. For values of kR > 0.35 the numerically computed
third-harmonic forces are smaller than predicted by the theories. However, this discrepancy is
in agreement with experiments of Huseby & Grue [4] and Krokstad et. al. [6], who, likewise,
observed discrepancies between experimental results and the theories for larger values of kR.
Irregular wave loads on a bottom xed circular cylinder at nite water depth
The combined potential ow- and Navier-Stokes solver is used to analyse hydrodynamic forces
from irregular waves on a circular cylinder. Forces calculated with the Morison equation, given
kinematics from the potential ow model, are compared with forces calculated by the potential-
ow-driven Navier-Stokes solver.
-140
-120
-100
-80
-60
-40
-20
0
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000
W
a
t
e
r

d
e
p
t
h

[
m
]
x [m]
CFD domain Generation zone Relaxation zone
Depth profile
Figure 2: Physical and computational domain for irregular wave computations. Generation and relaxation
zones are indicated by shaded grey. The computational domain of the Navier-Stokes solver is indicated
with shaded green and the generation relaxation zones are indicated with blue.
-5
-4
-3
-2
-1
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400
S
u
r
f
a
c
e

e
l
e
v
a
t
i
o
n

-

[
m
]
Time - t [s]
Investigated period
Surface elevation at x=4000 m
Figure 3: The surface elevation calculated by the potential ow model at the position of the cylinder,
x = 4000m.
In order to drive the Navier-Stokes solver, a one-way coupling between the potential ow
model and the Navier-Stokes solver has been developed and incorporated into the interface of the
waves2Foam utility [5]. At the start of the CFD computations, information from the potential
ow model is interpolated into the computational domain of the Navier-Stokes solver. Hereafter
the two models are time stepped concurrently and the generation and absorption zones of the
CFD model are, at every time step, feeded with data from the potential ow model. This is
ecient because the potential ow model is faster than the CFD solver and does therefore not
add substantial computational overhead.
The combined model is applied to a case of unidirectional irregular JONSWAP waves of
T
p
= 12s and H
s
= 8m. A sketch of the domain for the potential ow model is shown in
gure 2. The waves are generated at h
0
= 135m and propagated by the potential ow model
to a nite water depth of h
1
= 30m. The resulting free surface elevation at x = 4000m is
shown in gure 3. The time series was visually inspected and the shaded period recalculated
with the combined model. The computational domain of the Navier-Stokes solver had a size of
{L
x
, L
y
, L
z
} = {650; 30, 40}m and was resolved with 300.000 cells.
A simple estimate of the forces on the cylinder is provided by application of the Morison
equation with kinematics from the potential ow model. While this approach allows a practical
prediction of the forces from fully nonlinear waves, even for long time series (see e.g. [8]),
the Morison approximation is limited to non-breaking waves with no severe run-up and slender
cylinders. A more accurate calculation of the forces on the cylinder can be made by integrating
the pressure on the cylinder, calculated by the Navier-Stokes solver. With this method the
hydrodynamic forces can be calculated with the accuracy of the numerical approximation, even
for violently breaking waves.
-2.00e+06
-1.00e+06
0.00e+00
1.00e+06
2.00e+06
400 420 440 460 480 500

F
o
r
c
e

-

F
x

[
N
]
Time - t [s]
Morison force - OceanWave3D
Integrated pressure - OpenFOAM
Figure 4: Depth integrated hydrodynamic force from irregular waves on a circular cylinder. Blue line
represents forces based on the Morison equation and kinematics form the potential ow solver. Red line
represents forces from the solution of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations.
For the event indicated in gure 3, forces on the cylinder are calculated and presented in gure
4. Especially for the smaller waves in the beginning of the simulation an excellent agreement is
seen. The discrepancy observed for the largest wave and hereafter is attributed to the eect of
runup and the diracted eld.
Further application of the model will include breaking waves and multidirectional sea states.
Comparison with experiments carried out at DHI, Denmark, will also be made.
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank Signe Schler and associate professor Allan Engsig-Karup for providing
invaluable help with the running and analysing output from the potential ow solver,
OceanWave3D. The research was supported by Energinet.dk as a part of the Wave Loads project
(ForskEL grant 10495).
References
[1] A.P. Engsig-Karup, H.B. Bingham, and O. Lindberg. An ecient exible-order model for 3D
nonlinear water waves. Journal of Computational Physics, 228(6):21002118, April 2009.
[2] O.M. Faltinsen, J.N. Newman, and T. Vinje. Nonlinear Wave Loads On a Slender Vertical
Cylinder. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 289:179198, April 1995.
[3] J. Fenton. The numerical solution of steady water wave problems. Computers & Geosciences,
14(3):357368, 1988.
[4] M. Huseby and J. Grue. An Experimental Investigation Of Higher-Harmonic Wave Forces
On a Vertical Cylinder. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 414:75103, July 2000.
[5] N.G. Jacobsen, D.R. Fuhrman, and J. Fredse. A Wave Generation Toolbox For The Open-
Source CFD Library: OpenFOAM. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids,
2012. DOI: 10.1002/d.2726.
[6] J. R. Krokstad and C. T. Stansberg. Ringing Load Models Veried Against Experiments. In
OMAE, pages 223233, Copenhagen, 1995. ASME.
[7] . Malenica and B. Molin. Third-Harmonic Wave Diraction By a Vertical Cylinder. Journal
of Fluid Mechanics, 302:203229, April 1995.
[8] S. Schler, H. Bredmose, and H. B. Bingham. Irregular Wave Forces on Monopile Foundations:
Eect of Full Nonlinearity and Bed Slope. In International Conference on Ocean, Oshore
and Arctic Engineering. ASME, 2011.

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Accurate computation of wave loads on a bottom xed circular

Technical University of Denmark, Department of Mechanical Engineering,

Technical University of Denmark, Department of Wind Energy, Lyngby, Denmark

1 is the complex unit and f

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