Wave Force on a Partially Submerged Fixed Horizontal Circular Cylinder

Abstract

Circular cylinders are one of the most common geometries used in many structures, such as fixed platforms, risers, umbilical cables, offshore fish farms, floating offshore wind turbines, wave energy devices, plastic cleanup booms, and oil containment booms. Although partially submerged horizontal circular cylinders can be found in many offshore and marine structures, few works have investigated the influence of their positions beneath the free surface and the resulting wave force. The present work aimed to numerically study the wave force acting on a fixed horizontal circular cylinder near the free surface for different depths. The wave flow was modeled using a viscous model available in the StarCCM+ software using a two-dimensional numerical wave tank. The governing equations were solved using the finite volume in an unstructured mesh. A circular cylinder with a diameter (D) of 0.10 m and a regular wave with a steepness (H/L) of 0.025 were used in the present study. In this case, the cylinder diameter is much smaller than the wave length. Three different submerged depths were investigated, and the numerical results were compared with experimental data extracted from Dixon [1]. Good agreement was found for the first two cylinder positions (zc/D = 0 and −0.3). For the last case (zc/D = −0.5), a phase shift was observed. However, by correcting it, the agreement between the numerical and experimental data was also good.