MODELLING WAVE-STRUCTURE INTERACTION WITH A NEW COMPRESSIBLE TWO-PHASE FLOW SOLVER

This contribution presents and investigates the effects of the air entrainment and air compressibility on the shape and magnitude of the wave impacts occurring at crown walls on top of sea defenses. To this purpose, a new solver, developed in the OpenFoam environment to represent the wave interactions with impermeable and porous coastal structures, accounting for the fluid compressibility, is checked against recent laboratory tests of wave overtopping and wave impacts. By comparing the first results of this new code to the ones obtained with the native solver dealing with incompressible fluids exclusively, significant advances in the representation of the pressure signals and peaks at the walls seem to be achieved.