Benchmarking of a Computational Fluid Dynamics-Based Numerical Wave Tank for Studying Wave Load Effects on Fixed and Floating Offshore Structures

A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based numerical wave tank (NWT) is developed and verified to study wave load effects on fixed and free floating offshore structures. The model is based on solving Navier–Stokes equations on a structured grid, level set method for tracking the free surface, and an immersed boundary method for studying wave–structure interaction. This paper deals with establishing and verifying a CFD-based NWT. Various …