Interaction of Steep Waves with Vertical Walls

Abstract

A numerical algorithm is presented for studying the interaction of normally incident steep surface waves with a vertical wall. The method utilizes a boundary integral relation in conjunction with a time‐marching procedure to treat the fully nonlinear free‐surface conditions without any analytical approximations. Several smoothing schemes were found necessary to keep the solution from “blowing up.” A steady‐state pattern of the pressures and forces on the wall extending over several wave periods could be achieved depending on the size of the computational domain. Comparison with linear and third‐order perturbation solution for standing waves and Nagai's experimental results of 1969 show that the present results are in general in better agreement with experimental data than the analytical results.