Fast integral equation methods for fully nonlinear water wave modeling

We present the development and validation of an efficient numerical wave tank (NWT), which solves for fully nonlinear potential flow in three dimensions. This boundary element approach is based on a variation of the wave model of Grilli et al., which has been well validated. The mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian time updating is based on a second-order Taylor series expansion. In order to solve problems with complex geometries, we reformulate the model to use a 3D unstructured triangular mesh of the boundaries, and apply the fast multipole method implementation, ExaFMM, in parallel, to make the use of large grids practical. We demonstrate the various issues related to performance, comparing against the existing higher-order boundary element NWT on a structured mesh, as well as demonstrating the capabilities of this modified approach. Copyright © 2014 by the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE)