ABSTRACT
While linear radiation/diffraction models are still the tools of the trade in the wave energy sector, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is becoming increasingly popular for wave energy applications, see e.g. (Wolgamot and Fitzgerald 2015) and the references therein. The prevailing type of CFD studies are based on two-phase Reynolds-Averaged NavierStokes (RANS) equations using the volume of fluid (VOF) approach for free surface capturing. The VOF-RANS approach captures the nonlinear and viscous effects that influence the motion and power production of floating wave energy converters, see e.g. (Yuand Li 2013, Palm et al. 2016, Chen et al. 2017). The growing trend of using CFD is expected to continue, as Kim et al. (2016) recently showed that numerical wave tanks based on VOF-RANS are becoming economically competitive compared to physical model tests for floating production units.
