Focused wave interactions with floating structures: a blind comparative study

The paper presents results from the Collaborative Computational Project in Wave Structure Interaction (CCP-WSI) Blind Test Series 2. Without prior access to physical data, participants, with numerical methods ranging low-fidelity linear models fully non-linear Navier–Stokes (NS) solvers, simulate interaction between focused wave events and two separate, taut-moored, floating structures: a hemispherical-bottomed cylinder moonpool. ‘blind’ predictions for heave, surge, pitch mooring load, are compared against measurements. Dynamic time warping is used quantify predictive capability of participating methods. In general, NS solvers hybrid give more accurate predictions; however, heave amplitude predicted reasonably well by all methods; WEC-Sim implementation, CFD-informed viscous terms, demonstrates comparable even stronger solvers. Large variations solutions observed (even among similar methods), highlighting need standardisation modelling WSI problems.