Numerical Simulation of Scour Depth and Scour Patterns in Front of Vertical-Wall Breakwaters Using OpenFOAM

An advanced coupled numerical model was developed and implemented in the present work, describing the scour patterns and predicting the scour depth in front of vertical-wall breakwaters. It consists of two independent models, a hydrodynamic Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) model developed on the OpenFOAM (version 2.4.0) toolbox (CFD), describing the wave propagation and the associated hydrodynamic field, and a morphodynamic one (sediment transport model), which was developed in FORTRAN by the authors and yields the updated seabed morphology. The method used here is iterative. The hydrodynamic model is applied for any given initial seabed geometry and wave conditions, resulting in the hydrodynamic field of the flow, which is used as input by the second sediment transport model for the seabed morphology evolution. This process is repeated until the equilibrium profile is achieved. Model results are compared satisfactorily with experimental data for both scour patterns and prediction of scour depth.