A Study on the High-Order Spectral Model Capability to Simulate a Fully Developed Nonlinear Sea States

Modeling a nonlinear ocean wave is one of the primary concerns in ocean engineering and naval architecture to perform an accurate numerical study of wave-structure interactions. The high-order spectral (HOS) method, which can simulate nonlinear waves accurately and efficiently, was investigated to see its capability for nonlinear wave generation. An open-source (distributed under the terms of GPLv3) project named "HOS-ocean" was used in the present study. A parametric study on the "HOS-ocean" was performed with three-hour simulations of long-crested ocean waves. The considered sea conditions ranged from sea state 3 to sea state 7. One hundred simulations with fixed computational parameters but different random seeds were conducted to obtain representative results. The influences of HOS computational parameters were investigated using spectral analysis and the distribution of wave crests. The probability distributions of the wave crest were compared with the Rayleigh (first-order), Forristall (second-order), and Huang (empirical formula) distributions. The results verified that the HOS method could simulate the nonlinearity of ocean waves. A set of HOS computational parameters was suggested for the long-crested irregular wave simulation in sea states 3 to 7.