A Numerical Simulation of a Plunging Breaking Wave

Abstract

This fluid dynamics video was submitted to the gallery of fluid motion at the 2009 APS/DFD conference. The video shows the results of a of numerical simulation of a deep water plunging breaking wave. The two-phase calculation uses a Volume of Fluid technique, detailed in Dommermuth et. al. 2007, to simulate the free surface interface between immiscible fluids, surface tension and viscous effects are not considered. The initial wave is generated by applying a spatio-temporal pressure forcing on the free surface. The computational domain moves with the linear crest speed of the wave, and has dimesions 2pi/k x pi/2k x 2pi/k, with 1024 x 256 x 512 grid points, where k is the wave length. Periodic boundary conditions are used in the horizontal directions and free slip boundary conditions in the vertical. The Froude number is 1. The density ratio between the two fluids is 1000:1.