Modelling engineering applications using OpenFOAM at the riverine, coastal and marine environment

Historically, the design performance of hydraulic, coastal and marine structures was assessed and improved using empirical tools and physical modelling studies. Whilst these approaches are still indispensable in the design process, numerical models are increasingly used for confirming and verifying the structure general dimensions during early stages and for optimising and finalising the design during final stages, usually in combination with physical modelling. The design of coastal and hydraulic structures is mostly influenced by physical processes that involve complex three-dimensional flows, so the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models is generally recommended for these applications. These models are considered computationally expensive, due to the numerical solution of large systems of transport equations in 3D domains. The rapid advances in computer technology have nevertheless made their use parietal for engineering applications over the recent years. Currently, there is a wide range of CFD platforms suitable for simulating fluid interaction with hydraulic, coastal and marine structures, including both commercial solutions, such as ANSYS®-Fluent [1], Flow-3D® [2] or Star-CCM® [3] and open-source software, such as OpenFOAM® [4], Reef-3D [5] and Proteus [6]. Currently, OpenFOAM® is without doubt the standard regarding the open-source software and during the last years is increasingly established as the standard for CFD applications both in academic and commercial organisations. In addition to the lower cost, OpenFOAM is generally efficient in terms of accuracy and speed, flexible as it allows expert developers to further improve of the software, and it is accompanied with reasonable documentation and support from the online community. In this work, we will present a portfolio of test cases, comprising validation studies performed internally in HR Wallingford and results from consultancy projects, where OpenFOAM was used as a supporting tool to verify and improve the design of the structure. The objective of the presentation is to demonstrate that OpenFOAM® is a reliable CFD tool for modelling realistic scenarios and to present new developments currently being pursued in HR Wallingford