Numerical simulations of water wave propagation by volume of fluid approach

Within the study of artificial waves generated in laboratory, numerical simulations of the wave fields determined by piston-type wavemakers were carried out by means of Computational Fluid Dynamics. For the numerical wave flumes, two different commercial codes, namely CFX and FLUENT, were used solving the unsteady, two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations and applying the Volume Of Fluid methodology to deal with the different phases. In this way it was possible to calculate the wave propagation and analyze the generated incident waves. The accuracy of the numerical results in terms of wave profiles and propagation were assessed by comparison with an analytical solution available in literature showing a very good agreement of both the numerical results with the theoretical data. Moreover, a preliminary study was performed considering a more complex wave field which propagates in a simplified constant-slope coastal model.