Ocean Engineering 156 (2018) 306–317

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Ocean Engineering
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/oceaneng

Wave interaction with a tethered buoy: SPH simulation and

experimental validation
David F. Gunn a, Murray Rudman a, *, Raymond C.Z. Cohen b
a
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia
b
CSIRO Data61, Clayton, VIC, Australia

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Understanding the interaction between surface waves and floating, moored structures is an important problem for
SPH the design of offshore structures. Experimental analysis has traditionally been used to study these problems, but
Validation data using computational modelling could potentially reduce the number of experimental iterations required. In this
Wave-structure interaction paper we investigate the use of Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics as a method for modelling these problems and
Floating body thus reducing the number of experiments required. Validation data is obtained from generic experiments that
Moored body
contain the important features of wave-structure interaction. A moored spherical buoy oscillating both through
and across a free surface, as well as interacting with an incident sinusoidal wave train are discussed and com-
panion SPH simulations are run. We show here that SPH is capable of achieving accurate predictions of the buoy's
motion when interacting with the free surface with appropriate particle resolutions. An initial transient motion
was observed in the experiments as a long period oscillation of the buoy at its surge natural frequency. This
transient motion was also predicted by SPH, but at reduced amplitude. Overall SPH was determined to be a good
choice for modelling surface and structure interactions and we provide guidelines on appropriate particle reso-
lution for such interactions.

1. Introduction
The impact of large waves on ships and offshore structures is an
important aspect of maritime design, and much work has been conducted
to investigate methods of accurately determining the loads induced by
such impacts (Clauss, 2002; Schellin and El Moctar, 2007; Van Paepegem
et al., 2011; Gui et al., ; Rudman and Cleary, 2013; Zhao et al., 2014;
Rudman and Cleary, 2016). Presently, experimental testing of prototypes
remains the most reliable method for determining the feasibility of a
design to withstand significant wave impacts. However, repeated
experimental testing and design iteration can be expensive to conduct as
each iteration needs to be prototyped. In contrast to experimental testing,
numerical simulations can be performed to narrow the range of design
options, resulting in fewer experimental tests needing to be performed.
For numerical simulations to be worthwhile, the numerical technique
used needs to be both accurate and efficient to run.
In all but shallow water, offshore structures are typically moored
using tethering cables and chains (for example weather buoys, Tension
Leg Platforms (TLP), Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO)
vessels and floating offshore wind turbines). Since these structures are
capable of moving with 6 degrees of freedom, their interaction with large
non-linear surface waves is difficult to computationally model, thus a
sophisticated modelling technique is required. A technique that is
capable of modelling these interactions is Smoothed Particle Hydrody-
namics (SPH) (Monaghan, 1992, 2005) and is the focus of this study.
One of the strengths of SPH is the natural modelling of fluid bound-
aries. The technique has been utilised for modelling dam-breaking
problems (Cummins et al., 2012), sloshing problems (Souto-Iglesias
et al., 2006), breaking surface waves (Khayyer et al., 2008, 2009), and
many others (Doring et al., 2004; Bouscasse et al., 2013; Ba
sic et al.,
2014). This is due to its meshless Lagrangian formulation that is inher-
ently able to model changing fluid boundaries associated with object
motion without the need for any special treatment, or remeshing, that
mesh-based methods require. Despite the importance of surface wave
interactions with moored, floating structures, there is a lack of published
studies that investigate this interaction, and there is little or no data
suitable for validating computational models.
Le Touze et al. (Le Touze et al., 2010) investigated a large wave
impact on an FPSO vessel, providing a comparison between SPH simu-
lations and the experimental work of Yang et al. (2007). In their work

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: Murray.Rudman@monash.edu (M. Rudman).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oceaneng.2018.03.001
Received 22 October 2017; Received in revised form 2 March 2018; Accepted 2 March 2018
Available online 16 March 2018
0029-8018/Crown Copyright © 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
D.F. Gunn et al.
they found that the green water effects of the wave impact were
reasonably well modelled using SPH in 2D, but in 3D the results were in
error primarily due to the poorer particle resolution. However, the mo-
tion of the FPSO in their simulations was prescribed and the structure
may respond differently if allowed to dynamically respond to the
incoming wave - an inherently important requirement for any realistic
simulation technique developed to aid in the design process.
Water entry and exit validations have been performed for non-
tethered cylinders, boxes and wedges using SPH (Doring et al., 2004;
Shao, 2009; Campbell et al., 2009; Ba
sic et al., 2014), although these
studies have predominantly been 2D simulations. Bouscasse et al. (2013)
undertook a range of different 2D simulations of wave diffraction, and
complex free-body interactions with fluid and waves, showing good
agreement with experimental data. Ren et al. (2015) also presented 2D
simulations of wave interactions with freely floating bodies with good
agreement with experimental data. Many of these studies were focussed
on developments of the SPH algorithm to improve boundary treatments
and other aspects of the implementation, rather than on the physics of
wave-structure interaction. When the wave is not 2D or the structure is
not a quasi-2D object and instead has six degrees of freedom, 3D effects
are an essential aspect to consider.
Omidvar et al. (2013) proposed a variable particle mass SPH meth-
odology and showed results for an untethered “Manchester Bobber” in a
Gaussian wave packet that yielded quite good comparison to experi-
mental measurements. Pan et al. (2016) undertook 3D SPH simulations
of a quasi-2D experiment with two degrees of freedom and obtained good
results. They further simulated the interaction of a solitary wave on a
floating tethered platform, however had no data against which to vali-
date this case.
Rudman and Cleary (2013, 2016) investigated a fully 3D rogue wave
impact on a moored TLP using SPH, but no validation for this interaction
was presented and this remains a weakness of many publications in this
area.
Gunn et al. (2014) presented a preliminary study of the interaction
between a tethered spherical buoy and a fluid free surface, providing a
comparison between experimental data and SPH simulations. Their study
showed promising results for the use of SPH to model tethered objects,
but insufficient particle resolution meant that no quantitative conclu-
sions could be drawn.
To fill the gap in the open literature for studies of wave interaction
with floating, moored structures that are not quasi-2D interactions, the
current study presents results of a series of experiments of the interaction
between a free surface and a spherical buoy. This data is appropriate for
validating any computational method, and its provision is the first aim of
the study. Although appropriate for any simulation technique, here we
use it to compare to predictions from the SPH method that has been used
in previous studies (Cummins et al., 2012; Rudman and Cleary, 2013,
2016). This comparison comprises of two parts: first with the buoy
oscillating vertically across or horizontally along the free surface of a
body of water, and second the dynamic response of the buoy to sinusoidal
wave trains with varying periods. The experiments are simulated in SPH
and the comparison is used to determine the simulation parameters
required for obtaining acceptably accurate predictions of the buoy dy-
namics. This determination is the second aim of the study.
2. Methodology
2.1. Experimental setup
The experiments performed in this study were conducted in the
Monash Wave Tank. The tank is a 1 m wide flume that extends for
approximately 35 m, and a side view schematic is presented in Fig. 1. A
hydraulically driven, vertical-face, piston-type wave generator is present
at the left end of the tank, which moves parallel to a 30
sloped floor.
Following the piston region, the tank floor inclines upwards by 0.4 m
over 6 m. The tank floor is then flat for the remainder of the tank. The
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Ocean Engineering 156 (2018) 306–317
Fig. 1. Schematic of the Wave Tank used. This section view is along the central
plane of the tank. The red dot and axes represent the position of the coordinate
system origin. Not to scale. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this
figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
first 20.5 m of which is the working section of the tank. A porous, wave
damping beach in placed into the tank, commencing at the end of the
working section. The beach extends upwards at an angle of 18
and the
end wall of the tank is located shortly after the beach has risen 2 m above
the floor.
For all experiments and simulations, the x-coordinate is defined in the
lengthwise direction of the tank (towards the beach and away from the
piston), the y-coordinate in the upwards vertical direction, and the z-
coordinate across the tank (‘out of the page’ with respect to Fig. 1). The
origin of the coordinate system is set so that x ¼ 0 is at the start of the
working section, y ¼ 0 is at the floor of the working section, and z ¼ 0 is
at the mid-plane of the tank (z ¼ 0:5 corresponds to the side walls). The
coordinate system origin is shown in Fig. 1 by the red axes. A water depth
of 80 cm, measured in the working section, is used in all test cases.
A spherical, tethered buoy is used in the experiments performed in
this study. It has a mass of 1.745 kg and radius of 101.5 mm. The buoy
was made from a hollow sphere of high density expanded polystyrene
(density of 29.5 kg/m3) with 40 mm thickness. To ensure that the centre
of mass was located below the centroid (guaranteeing a stable sitting
orientation in the water) a 38 mm thick mild steel disk of 40 mm radius
was placed in the lower half of the buoy as detailed in Fig. 2 (a). This steel
disk provided the majority of the mass to the buoy and offset the centre of
mass to 27.0 mm below the centroid. Using a CAD software (SolidWorks)
representation of the buoy, the Ixx , Iyy , and Izz components of the moment
of inertia matrix were found to be 1.7352, 1.7764, and 1.7352 respec-
tively, and the off-diagonal moments were 0.
The buoy was painted with a black and white octant pattern (Fig. 2b)
to improve visibility in the motion capture process. Additional markers
were added to the white sections to provide additional tracking points for
the motion capture process, and thus more reliable processing. The de-
tails of this process are discussed in Section 2.2.
Offshore structures in deep water can be tethered by cables that, due
to their length, are noticeably elastic. In order to represent a similar
scenario to offshore structures, the buoy in the experiments was tethered
to the tank floor using a cable (1 mm diameter) and a spring (stiffness k ¼
30:88 N/m) system shown in Fig. 3. A coil spring is required at the
laboratory scale as the cable length is not sufficient to be noticeably
elastic. A potential issue is that the coil spring could create additional
unknown damping when expanding or contracting underwater, which is
difficult to implement into the SPH model. Consequently a pulley system
was used near the tank floor that allowed the spring to be located above
the water. The length of the cable and spring pre-tension are set so the
resting position of the buoy is half submerged. The resistance of the
pulley system was negligible compared to the buoyancy forces on the
buoy and is neglected.
As mentioned, two different types of experiments were undertaken:
oscillation tests and wave-train interactions. Both vertical and horizontal
oscillation tests were performed. For oscillation tests in the vertical di-
rection, the spherical buoy was pulled under the surface so that top of the
buoy was completely submerged by 15 mm. Once submerged to the
correct depth, the cable was pressed against a fixed wedge above the
tank, as shown in the schematic in Fig. 4. A mark on the cable (shown in
the figure as the red mark) identified the initial location of the point of
the wedge, ensuring a consistent release position. Once the submerged
buoy was in a static equilibrium, the cable was released and the buoy
allowed to oscillate and eventually return to its static equilibrium
D.F. Gunn et al.
Fig. 3. Schematic of the experimental setup with the floating tethered buoy at
its resting position. Note that the figure is not to scale.
Fig. 4. The release mechanism for the Vertical Oscillation tests. The red mark
on the cable is pressed against the point of the wedge to ensure that the release
height remains consistent between repetitions. (For interpretation of the refer-
ences to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of
this article.)
position. This method resulted in more consistent results than those
previously reported (Gunn et al., 2014).
2.2. Motion tracking
Motion capture software (SwiMCap, developed at CSIRO) is used to
measure the trajectory of the buoy in the experiments. The software
utilises multiple synchronised camera views to determine the 3D location
of an object in the fields of view. In the experiments the cameras are
located above the water surface and look down at the buoy, so no
refraction effects are present except for the lens distortion. Consequently
the camera calibration for such cases could be performed ex situ. Each
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Ocean Engineering 156 (2018) 306–317
Fig. 2. The spherical buoy used in the experiments. (a) Cross
section schematic of the buoy. The buoy and steel disk are
cylindrically symmetric about the vertical line of symmetry,
(b) The octant pattern painted on the buoy.
camera used in the experiment is calibrated using OpenCV (www.opencv.
org) to determine the intrinsic parameters of the cameras (such as the
focal length, principal point, and distortion factors). A chessboard
pattern, shown in Fig. 6, is used to perform this calibration. The intrinsic
parameters are then combined with landmarks in the view to determine
the cameras extrinsic properties (location and orientation) precisely.
Four Sony HDR-CX220E video cameras were used to record the buoy
motion in the experiments. The cameras are placed at four locations
around the buoy to allow a motion tracking technique to be used to
determine the 3D coordinates of the buoy's centroid. For the experiments
all cameras were set to the same quality settings, which included a frame
rate of 50 frames per second. During the experiments a red light (see
Fig. 5) is flashed in the field of view of all cameras, allowing the cameras
to be synchronised during post-processing.
For each camera the intrinsic and extrinsic properties that describe
the transformation from world coordinates ðxw ; yw ; zw Þ to pixel co-
ordinates ðu; vÞ need to be known in order to give the estimates for the
marker's position. The transformation between world and pixel co-
ordinates is given by the following equation:
2 3
2 3 xw
uw 6 7
4 vw 5 ¼ C 6 yw 7 (1)
4 zw 5
w
1
where w is a scaling factor, C ¼ A½R T, A is the 3  3 intrinsic parameter
matrix (camera, lens, and other distortions), and R and T are the extrinsic
parameters describing the rotational and translational transformations
between world coordinates and 3D camera coordinates. The checker-
board pattern calibration was used to determine the matrix A for each
camera. The checkerboard is placed in front of the camera at different
positions and slopes, and each image is input into an OpenCV calibration
application, some example images of this are shown in Fig. 6.
Numerous landmarks are marked on the walls of the tank, whose
coordinates are known exactly. The cameras used for the experiments are
placed so that there are as many landmarks in the view as possible to
ensure the extrinsic properties are more accurately obtained. The land-
marks are then identified in the camera view and used to determine the
½R T matrix using the OpenCV calibration application. Fig. 7 shows the
identification of the landmarks (the inside corners of the L shapes for the
landmarks partway up the wall, and where the edge between the red and
yellow tape meets the wall top for the top landmarks).
In the motion capture process the pixel coordinates of a point can be
known for a single camera view, but this single view is not sufficient to
determine the points’ world coordinates. This is due the fact that each
image pixel can correspond to any point along a ray originating from the
camera, so it is impossible to determine exactly which world coordinate
is correct. In order to identify the location of a particular marker, it must
be visible in at least two camera views and the lines of possible points
must intersect. However, there are some potential errors that can be
introduced in the calibration process and also when the user is identi-
fying the ðu; vÞ coordinates (i.e. inaccurate clicking on the markers in the
D.F. Gunn et al.
software), thus a least squares method is used to estimate the world co-
ordinates of the point that is closest to the lines of possible solutions by
minimising the sum of the square of the distances from the world coor-
dinate to the rays.
A total of 11 markers on the upper hemisphere of the buoy were
tracked during the experiments: 3 markers in each of white octants, and
the 5 intersections of black and white octants. Fig. 8 shows an example
view of the buoy in one of the experiments, with 6 markers present in the
particular view. Since the markers are on the surface of a sphere of known
radius, RT , the location of the sphere's centroid can be calculated by
defining a function:
X used in this study is identical to that used in Rudman and Cleary (2013)
fE ðxÞ ¼ ðjx  xi j  RT Þ2 (2)
i
where xi is calculated position of marker i. The function fE essentially
tries to fit a sphere of radius RT , centred at x, to the set of marker loca-
tions and returns an estimate of the error. The centroid that minimised
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Ocean Engineering 156 (2018) 306–317
Fig. 5. Camera views from the four cameras used to
record the buoy motion. The red light used to syn-
chronise timing is seen in each image at the end of
the pole. (For interpretation of the references to
colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to
the Web version of this article.)
Fig. 6. In the calibration method a chessboard
pattern is moved in front of the camera in a range of
positions and orientations. The calibration software
uses the distortion of the pattern to determine the
intrinsic properties of the camera.
the error of the sphere fit was then calculated computationally.
2.3. SPH methodology
In SPH, the fluid is represented by a collection of interpolation points,
typically referred to as “particles”, that replace the computational mesh
present in traditional methods. The discretised equations of motion are
solved for each of these particles, using a Lagrangian description of the
equations of motion. Each particle is influenced by the neighbouring
particles at any given time, but there is no explicit connectivity that keeps
certain particles nearby for the entire simulation. The implementation
and by Cummins et al. (2012). Consequently, details of the equations,
boundary conditions, and other simulation details are not repeated here
and only a brief overview of the method is provided.
General details of the SPH method are well described by numerous
authors, including Monaghan, 1992, 2005, and Cleary (1998). There are
two main variants of SPH for incompressible flow simulation – Weakly
D.F. Gunn et al. Ocean Engineering 156 (2018) 306–317

Fig. 7. Locating the landmarks in the field of view.

The vertices of the pink lines indicate the location of
the landmark on the screen. The green lines are a
reprojection of the pink lines, giving a visual indica-
tion whether the calibration is accurate or not. A
zoomed view has been edited into this image showing
a landmark at ðx; y; zÞ ¼ ð0:864; 1:107;  0:5Þ. (For
interpretation of the references to colour in this figure
legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of
this article.)

Fig. 8. Identification of the markers on the surface of

the buoy. Six of the 11 markers are visible in this
frame and the user marks them with a circle. The
crosses represent the estimated marker location based
on this camera and other cameras where the marker
is visible and are included in views where the marker
is not present (e.g. the yellow marker is not visible in
this view but its estimate is included here). Only 8
identifier colours are available, so blue, green and red
are repeated.

Compressible SPH (WCSPH) which was the method originally proposed (Monaghan, 1994):
by Monaghan (1994) for incompressible flow and Incompressible SPH
dr i X 2mj    
(ISPH), first introduced by Cummins and Rudman (1999). In WCSPH an ¼ vi þ ε v  vi W r i  r j ; h (3)
artificial, stiff equation of state is used in which small changes in density dt ρi þ ρj j
result in large changes in pressure, hence forcing the flow to be almost !
incompressible. The main advantage of WCSPH is a simple algorithm dvi X Pi Pj  
¼ Fi  mj 2 þ 2 þ Πij rW r i  r j ; h (4)
which relates pressure and density via the equation of state function. The dt j
ρi ρj
main disadvantage of WCSPH is that limiting density fluctuations to less
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
than ε times the fluid density requires the sound speed (cs ¼ ∂P=∂ρ) to d ρi X    
pffiffiffi ¼ mj vi  vj ⋅rW r i  r j ; h
be of order 1= ε times the typical velocity of the flow. The Courant dt
(5)
j
time-step restriction applies also to the sound speed (i.e. pressure waves
must be resolved by the method). Thus to enforce density fluctuations of
where 0  ε  1 is the XSPH term introduced by Monaghan (1992). This
less than 1%, the sound speed must be 10 times higher than the flow
keeps the particles orderly in the absence of viscosity and ε is chosen as
speed, meaning the time-step is ten times more restrictive than a truly
0.5 in this research. F i is the sum of the external forces on particle i, Pi is
incompressible method. In contrast, ISPH enforces incompressibility in a
the pressure of particle i, and Πij is the viscous term given by
more traditional way via a Poisson pressure equation (PPE) for the
pressure (i.e. there is no equation of state). Hence the Courant time-step is   
ξ 4μi μj vi  vj ⋅ r i  r j
based purely on the flow speed allowing order of magnitude larger Πij ¼ ⋅ ⋅  (6)
ρi ρj μi þ μj r i  r j j2 þ β2
time-steps. However the algorithmic complexity of ISPH is significant
and the implicit solution of the PPE is computationally quite expensive.
where ξ ¼ 5:75 for the Wendland kernel, and β is a small parameter that
In our experience ISPH does not offer significant time savings and the  
ensures singularities are avoided when r i  r j  ¼ 0 (typically β ¼ 0:01δx
small density fluctuations inherent in WCSPH do not adversely affect the
where δx is the mean particle spacing). The pressure terms (Pi and Pj ) in
quality of the resulting solution. Consequently WCSPH has been chosen
Eq. (4) are given by the weakly compressible equation of state:
here as the simulation method.
In this paper, an improved Euler time-stepping scheme is used to solve  γ
ρi
the equations of motion in SPH, including a mass continuity equation Pi ¼ P0 1 (7)
ρ0

310
D.F. Gunn et al.
where γ is chosen to equal 7 (Cleary, 1998), ρ0 is the reference density
(chosen as 1000 kg/m3 for water), and P0 is the overall dynamic pressure
scale given by
γP0
¼ c2s (8)
ρ0
where cs is the speed of sound.
There are a number of different ways of implementing solid object
boundary conditions in SPH, and this area has received attention in a
number of recent studies. Bouscasse et al. (2013) used a ghost particle
approach (i.e. several rows of fictitious particles inside the boundary) on
which ghost particle pressures were set via the Neumann pressure con-
dition and ghost particle velocities calculated from neighbouring fluid
particles to satisfy both the divergence-free condition (in part of the
calculation) and the no-slip condition in the viscous sub-step. Zheng et al.
(Zheng et al., 2018) used ISPH and the mirror particle approach, however
replaced the PPE on the boundary with an explicit expression for the
pressure gradient. This resulted in more accurate pressure estimates on
the surface of a submerged object although similar estimates of motions
to those obtained from a more traditional mirror particle approach except
for the puzzling result of different motion periods.
Here we use the repulsive forcing approach originally given in
(Monaghan, 1994) and more recently used in (Omidvar et al., 2013)
where it was found to give better results than the particle boundary
forcing method of Kajtar and Monaghan (2009). When used with
WCSPH, we have found this boundary technique provides results for the
integrated forces on the object surface that are equivalently good to more
complex techniques, even though the individual particle pressures can be
noisy. This apparent contradiction arises because forces on the object are
determined from pressure gradients that in our experience are
well-estimated using the repulsive forcing method which is significantly
simpler to implement in practice than ghost and mirror particles.
2.4. Wave generation
In the second part of this study, surface waves will be produced using
SPH and compared to experimentally produced waves. However, repli-
cating the entire wave flume (in 3D) using SPH requires an infeasibly
large number of particles, including large numbers to approximate parts
of the flume far away from the surface interaction with the buoy which is
the only region of interest. To reduce the number of particles required,
the domain was shortened with boundary conditions in the x-direction
assumed to be periodic. A spatially varying momentum source (called
here a “wavemaker region”) was utilised to generate the wave. The
general methodology for the wavemaker region is described in Rudman
and Cleary (2016), but it is used here in a different manner. The wave-
maker region remains stationary and applies a force to fluid particles
inside its region of influence that aims to ensure their velocity matches a
specified velocity field. This velocity field can be any valid fluid velocity
field, but in this paper we use the intermediate depth Airy wave solution
(Young, 1999):
agk cosh ky
vx ¼ sinψ (9)
ω cosh kd
agk sinh ky
vy ¼ cosψ (10)
ω cosh kd
vz ¼ 0: (11)
Here a is the wave amplitude (mean-to-peak), g is gravitational ac-
celeration, k is the wave number ( ¼ 2π =λ), ω is the angular frequency ( ¼
2π =τ), d is the depth to the mean surface level, and ψ ¼ kx  ωt. The
forcing is an increasing function of the difference between a particle's
velocity and the desired velocity at that spatial location and time.
The wavemaker region spans the entire z  dimension, extends from
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Ocean Engineering 156 (2018) 306–317
0.2 m above the tank floor to the still water level in the y  direction and
its length in the x  direction depends on the wavelength. In all cases, an
unforced region in the x direction of approximately 1.5 m was left to
allow the buoy to react freely to incoming waves. The total length of the
SPH domain in the x  direction is set to be an integer number of
wavelengths, ensuring that waves reentering the wavemaker region
(after passing through the periodic boundary) are in phase with the
desired velocity field and require less artificial forcing.
This momentum source approach is conceptually similar to the one
discussed by Liu et al. (2015), however it is intuitively simpler. Instead of
basing the forcing on the temporal wave amplitude function, it is based
on the velocity deviation and unlike that of (Liu et al., 2015) can handle
any arbitrary 3D wave form provided an analytic expression for the ve-
locity field is available. This, of course, is not always the case, but for the
tests discussed in this study it is available. Because the domain length
must be an integer number of wavelengths to accommodate periodicity,
this approach cannot be used to handle more general wave spectra.
However the periodicity means that there is no need of a wave damper,
and the waves that pass out one end of the domain and recycle back into
the wave maker region are rapidly forced back to the desired profile.
Calibration tests of the wavemaker, conducted in the Ph.D. thesis of
Gunn (see Section 4.2.3 of Gunn, 2017), showed that the amplitude of the
generated wave is sensitive to a number of input parameters, specifically
the permeability factor K (see Rudman and Cleary, 2016), and the di-
mensions of the wavemaker region. Although effort was made to ensure
that the amplitude of the generated waves match those of the experi-
ments, an error of up to 5% was observed. This discrepancy is accounted
for in the analysis described below.
3. Results: oscillation tests
The first validation study considers the behaviour of a tethered
spherical buoy released from a non-equilibrium position that subse-
quently oscillates near an otherwise flat free surface. Experiments are
performed where the buoy described in Section 2.1 is displaced either
vertically or horizontally and released. These experiments are then
reproduced in a number of SPH simulation to investigate the capability of
SPH to predict the buoyancy, drag, and spring forces on the buoy, and to
understand the requirements for obtaining accurate results.
3.1. Vertical oscillation of the buoy
The vertical oscillation experiment in which the buoy was initially
submerged by 15 mm and released was performed six times and an
average trajectory calculated. The runs were quite consistent, with each
trajectory deviating less than 3% of the average trajectory. The natural
frequency of this system is difficult to theoretically predict, so it was
measured by finding the average time between consecutive peaks and
consecutive troughs. It was found that the period of oscillation was
approximately 0.6 s, corresponding to a natural frequency of 1.67 Hz.
The mean experimental trajectory is shown as the solid black line in
Fig. 9.
The experiments were reproduced using SPH simulations with
different particle spacings: 10 mm, 5 mm, and 2.5 mm, equivalent to
approximately 20, 40, and 80 particle spacings across the buoy diameter.
The buoy was placed at the same initial depth as the experiments with the
same spring stiffness and initial spring extension. The simulations were
performed in a 1 m  1 m wide tank in order to reduce the total number
of particles, and hence computational expense. Fig. 9 shows a comparison
between the vertical trajectories of the centre of the sphere in these
simulations and the experimental mean trajectory.
With a particle spacing of 10 mm the agreement is shown to be poor.
The amplitude of the first oscillation is in error by 35%, and the period
has approximately 15% error. Reducing the particle spacing to 5 mm
(also shown in Fig. 9) improves the period agreement significantly (to
within the experimental variation) and the amplitude error decreases to
D.F. Gunn et al.
15%. Further reduction to 2.5 mm shows that the amplitude is within 2%
and the period remains within experimental variation. However, each of
the simulations shows an increased damping of the motion after the first
oscillation that is greater than that measured experimentally. An un-
published CSIRO report has suggested that particle disorder in the vi-
cinity of a moving object can dissipate significant amounts of energy in
SPH simulations. It is hypothesised that this is the likely the cause of the
additional damping observed in these simulations. However further
focussed study is needed to prove this hypothesis.
It is clear that improving the particle resolution gives significantly
better results. However, the 2.5 mm particle spacing simulation (in which
the buoy diameter is approximately 80 particles) required in excess of 50
million particles for just this small test case. This simulation required
over 11 weeks of walltime using 12 processors (with an OpenMP
implementation) and 48 GB of memory on a Dual Xeon 8-core E5-2650
Compute Node. The computational expense at such resolution is not
feasible for most applications, and larger simulations become impractical
even for research purposes until computing hardware developments have
been made or more massively parallel implementations of the SPH
method are developed. In summary, if an object is discretised with 40
SPH particles across the key dimension, for an unforced, tethered oscil-
lation we expect good amplitude estimates, although errors of order 15%
in frequency predictions.
3.2. Horizontal oscillation of the buoy
In the second oscillation test, the buoy was displaced horizontally
rather than vertically. Using the same experimental setup, the buoy was
pulled 0.5 m horizontally across the surface of the water and kept half-
submerged. The buoy was then released and allowed to freely return to
its equilibrium position. The release point in this case was not as
consistent as in the vertical release experiments, and the mean starting
position was measured from the video to be 50.82.0 cm from its equi-
librium position. As in the vertical oscillation tests, the mean trajectory of
the buoy was measured across 6 runs. The variability of the starting
position caused the amplitude of oscillation to vary by around cm, but the
effect on the timing of the peaks and zero crossing times was negligible.
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Ocean Engineering 156 (2018) 306–317
Fig. 9. Buoy displacement in the vertical direction
for the vertical oscillation test.
An average period was estimated similarly to the vertical oscillation test
and was found to be 5.2 s, corresponding to a frequency of oscillation of
0.19 Hz. The experimental data is shown as the black curve in Fig. 10.
Two SPH simulations were performed, one with 10 mm particle
spacing, and another with 5 mm particle spacing. In these simulations a
domain of length 2 m, width 1 m, and fluid depth of 0.8 m was modelled.
Since the domain has been doubled in length compared to the vertical
oscillation tests, there are double the number of SPH particles. Addi-
tionally the tests here require simulation times of at least 12 s of simu-
lation time (nearly 5 times as long as the previous case), so the
simulations require approximately 10 times as much computational time
to run. For these reasons, the 2.5 mm particle spacing was omitted from
this test case.
The mean trajectory in the experiments and the simulated trajectories
using SPH are shown in Fig. 10. For a mean particle spacing of 10 mm the
motion is rapidly damped indicating that, like the vertical tests, the
damping is over predicted in SPH. For the 5 mm particle spacing simu-
lation the amplitude of the initial oscillation is in very good agreement,
but the amplitude of the first trough is approximately 15% in error. The
period of the first full oscillation is under-predicted by around 6%. The
magnitude of the errors resulting from this damping is consistent with the
errors observed in the vertical oscillation tests for the same particle
spacing. If the 2.5 mm particle spacing case were feasible to perform, it is
likely that the errors would improve to less than 2%, within the experi-
mental measurement error, as was observed in the vertical oscillation
case.
4. Wave train tests
While the simple oscillation tests are useful for determining how well
SPH can model the interaction with the fluid surface, the long term goal
of modelling the interaction of a ship with a rogue wave requires that the
interaction between simple waves and the buoy be validated. To perform
these validations and interactions with the buoy, the Monash wave tank
was used to generate single frequency wave trains with periods of either
1, 2, or 3 s in water of 80 cm depth which are then compared with SPH
simulations. The 1 s period wave is chosen as it provides waves that are
Fig. 10. Buoy displacement in the horizontal direc-
tion for the horizontal oscillation test.
D.F. Gunn et al. Ocean Engineering 156 (2018) 306–317

classified as deep water waves (kd > π ), while the 2 and 3 s period waves ζ ¼ a sinðkx  ωtÞ (13b)
provide intermediate depth waves (π =10 < kd  π ). A shallow water
For small values of kd, tanh kd  kd ¼ 2π d=λ. Consequently we
wave would require a 16 m wavelength (with a period of 5.8 s) which
choose to non-dimensionalise the measured trajectories by the co-
requires an infeasibly long piston stroke in the tank and a 16 m long SPH
efficients of the cos and sin in Eq. (13):
domain that requires too many particles to be practicle. The wave trains
interact with the buoy (Fig. 3) located 1.5 m from the piston end of the ðx  xe Þd y  ye t  t0
working section (see Fig. 1). The same spring is used (stiffness of x ¼ y ¼ t ¼ (14)
aλ a τ
30.88 N/s) as in the previous experiments, and the untensioned length is
set to ensure the buoy is half submerged at rest. The motion tracking where ðxe ; ye Þ is the resting position of the buoy, a is the amplitude of the
technique is applied to measure the response of the buoy to the waves. incident wave train, τ is the wave period, and t0 is the time that the first
fully developed crest reaches the buoy.
4.1. Non-dimensionalisation
4.2. Waves with 1 s period
Young (1999) gives a formulation of the trajectory of fluid particles
based on linear wave theory. The position of a fluid particle, ðχ ; ζÞ, The first wave train interaction considered is between the tethered
measured from its mean position ðx; yÞ is given as spherical buoy and waves with a period of 1 s. At the depth used in the
study, the wavelength was 1.556 m, which classified the waves as deep
agk cosh ky
χ¼ cosðkx  ωtÞ (12a) water waves. Experimental data for heave and surge motion of the buoy's
ω2 cosh kd
centre of mass are given as the black lines in Figs. 12 and 13.
agk sinh ky The SPH domain used in the simulations was 4.669 m, or 3 wave-
ζ¼ sinðkx  ωtÞ (12b) lengths, in the x-direction, and the wavemaker region was set to be 3.0 m
ω2 cosh kd
long. Two simulations were performed with different mean particle
where a is the mean-to-peak wave amplitude. Using the dispersion spacings: 10 mm requiring nearly 4 million particles, and 5 mm requiring
relationship, ω2 ¼ gk tanh kd, and measuring particles on the surface (i.e. approximately 30 million particles. Figs. 12 and 13 also show compari-
kd ¼ ky), these equations become sons of the heave and surge motion of the buoy's centre of mass. The
waves generated in the experiment had an amplitude of 5.8 cm. Although
a
χ¼ cosðkx  ωtÞ (13a) the amplitude parameter in the wavemaker region was set to match the
tanh kd experimental waves, the wavemaker error discussed earlier caused the
resulting waves to have amplitudes of approximately 5.5 cm. Thus, the

Fig. 11. Visualisation of the simulated buoy in a 1 s

wave train with 10 mm particle spacing. The figures
show a slice through the midplane of the tank. The
particles on the left have been coloured by their
speed in the x-direction, and the particles on the right
have been coloured by their pressure.

313
D.F. Gunn et al.
non-dimensionalisation in Eqn. (14) uses the actual amplitude of the
waves and not the specified amplitude. A visualisation of the fluid flow
around the buoy is shown in Fig. 11.
For the heave motion in Fig. 12, the amplitude of the simulated
motion with 10 mm particle spacing is underpredicted by 15% over the
first two periods, increasing to 25% underprediction afterwards. Addi-
tionally, after t  4, a phase error of around 15% is introduced. For the
5 mm simulation, the amplitude of motion is in better agreement with the
experiments, but some phase error is still observed. This phase error is
likely to be due to the difference in wave generation mechanisms be-
tween experiments and simulations.
In the surge motion in Fig. 13, however, there is a long period
modulation clearly evident in both experimental and simulation results,
although more noticeable in the 5 mm simulation. To investigate the
nature of this long period modulation, the experimental results are shown
in Fig. 14, over a longer period of time. The buoy trajectory shows that
this modulation significantly reduces in amplitude after a few oscilla-
tions, indicating that the modulation is an initial transient motion.
In addition to the modulation, the surge position of the buoy does not
average to zero. Since x ¼ 0 corresponds to the buoy's initial resting
position, this indicates that there is a net, non-zero force on the buoy that
is offsetting it from its resting position. For the 5.8 cm amplitude wave
case the buoy's mean position is located at x ¼ 0:5, which corresponds
to a mean displacement of 8.86 cm and a cable angle of approximately 7

314
Ocean Engineering 156 (2018) 306–317
from vertical. The tension in the cable at this mean position is 4.535 N
with 0.566 N in the horizontal component. Since the buoy typically
moves in the direction of the wave when ascending the front of an
incoming wave, and opposite to the wave when descending down the
back, it experiences the increasing frontal slope of the wave for over half
of the wave period. The slope causes the buoyancy force on the buoy to
not be vertical, and since the buoy observes the front slope more than the
back slope there will be a net horizontal buoyancy force on the buoy.
Since the vertical buoyancy force on the buoy is 21.48 N, a net horizontal
buoyancy of 0.566 N is not unreasonable.
A frequency analysis of the 1 s period case with 5.8 cm amplitude is
performed over the full time series and shown in Fig. 15. The surge
frequency spectra, shown in Fig. 15a, shows a large peak at 1 Hz, cor-
responding to the frequency of the incident wave train. There is also a
peak at approximately 0.19 Hz, which is the natural frequency of oscil-
lation that was observed in the horizontal oscillation tests that were
performed earlier (shown as the vertical dashed blue line in the figure).
This result indicates the modulation is an initial transient motion of the
buoy, caused by the initial few waves displacing the buoy horizontally
with subsequent modulation coming from the buoy attempting to return
to its horizontal equilibrium position. The heave frequency spectra, in
Fig. 15b, shows the same large peak at the wave train frequency, however
there is no peak at the natural frequency of vertical oscillation (1.67 Hz).
Small peaks are also observed at 2 and 3 Hz in both frequency spectra,
Fig. 12. Non-dimensionalised heave motion of the
buoy in the experiments and simulations with a 1 s
period wave train.
Fig. 13. Non-dimensionalised surge motion of the
buoy in the experiments and simulations with a 1 s
period wave train.
Fig. 14. The full non-dimensionalised time series of
the wave train case with 1 s period.
D.F. Gunn et al.
however these are resonance frequencies of the wave train.
With the knowledge that the modulation is an initial transient mo-
tion, it can be concluded that it is more heavily damped in the SPH
simulations, consistent with the additional damping observed in the
horizontal oscillation cases. In the 5 mm simulations, the damping of
these motions is less, and in Fig. 13 the transient motion is in better
agreement with the experiments, with an error of approximately 10%.
Consequently, the disagreements that SPH has with the experimental
results is due to the same damping that was observed earlier.
4.3. Waves with 2 and 3 s period
The interaction between the buoy and wave trains with periods of 2
and 3 s were similarly generated experimentally. In the experiments, the
2 and 3 s waves had amplitudes of 4.0 cm and 7.1 cm, and wavelengths of
4.85 m and 7.9 m respectively. The experimentally measured surge and
heave motion is shown as the solid black lines in Figs. 16 and 17 for the
2 s wave and Figs. 18 and 19 for the 3 s wave. The start-up transient surge
modulation observed in the 1 s wave was not observed experimentally or
numerically with the 2 or 3 s wave.
SPH simulations were run and similarly to the 1 s wave test, although
the simulated waves were specified to have matching amplitudes, the
resulting waves were smaller with amplitudes of 3.8 cm and 6.8 cm
respectively. Due to the large number of particles required to simulate
these cases with 5 mm particle spacing, only 10 mm simulations were
undertaken.
A comparison between simulation and experiments for the 2 s wave is
shown in Fig. 16 for surge and Fig. 17 for heave motion of the buoy's
centre of mass. The amplitude of the surge motion is underpredicted by
25% with a 5% phase error. In contrast, the heave motion is in reasonable
agreement with the experiments with an amplitude error of 15% and 2%
phase error.
Finally, waves with a period of 3 s are simulated in SPH and compared
to the experimental results. The amplitude of the surge motion, shown in
Fig. 18, is underpredicted by 21%, and the trajectory is out of phase by
315
Ocean Engineering 156 (2018) 306–317
Fig. 15. Frequency spectra of the 1s wavetrain case
with amplitude 5.8 cm in the (a) surge direction and
(b) heave direction. The vertical dashed blue lines
indicates the respective natural frequency obtained
from the oscillation tests performed in Section 3.
12%. Conversely, the heave motion, shown in Fig. 19, is more accurately
predicted, with an error of 12% in amplitude and less than 1% error in
phase.
The simulated wave train interactions with the spherical buoy here
indicate that the buoy's heave trajectory is more accurately predicted in
SPH than the surge trajectory. The primary force that determines the
vertical position is the interplay between buoyancy and weight of the
buoy, which is reasonably accurately modelled using SPH. In the surge
motion, the force on the buoy is hydrodynamic and primarily arises from
the drag from the fluid. The first wave that interacts with the buoy im-
poses a transient response from the buoy as it is offset from the equi-
librium position. The horizontal oscillation case showed that SPH does
not accurately predict the initial transient motion at coarse particle
spacings, and the surge trajectories of the buoy responding to the 2 and
3 s period waves also shows that the first peak is smaller than the
following oscillations. For increased resolutions (40–50 particles across
the buoy diameter), better results are expected in line with the results for
the initial transient in 1 s case. Clearly, particle resolution in SPH plays an
important role in accurately predicting the initial transience of the buoy.
At a particle spacing of 5 mm, or 1/40th of the buoy diameter, the tran-
sient motion is reasonably predicted (within 10% error); however, if a
coarser particle spacing of 10 mm, or 1/20th of the buoy diameter must
be used then errors of 20–30% can be expected in the transient motion of
the buoy.
4.4. Second order stokes theory
Because the waves used above are not strictly first order waves, in an
attempt to improve the SPH predictions without refining the particle
spacing, the velocity field was modified to follow 2nd Order Stokes
theory. This change was observed to make small improvements to the
amplitude of the buoy's predicted motion, particularly in the 3 s period
case, but no significant improvement of the phase error was noticed. For
the 2 s period case, the second order terms was 4 orders of magnitude
smaller than the first order terms and the observed predictions were only
D.F. Gunn et al.
1% different from the previous simulations. The 1 s period cases studied
had second order velocity terms 10 orders of magnitude smaller than the
first order, so the Stokes theory velocity field makes no difference to the
predicted buoy motion.
5. Conclusions
The experimental data measured in this study was used to compare to
the results of SPH simulation in order to make some clear statements
about the resolution requirements needed in SPH to accurately model the
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Ocean Engineering 156 (2018) 306–317
Fig. 16. Non-dimensionalised surge motion of the
buoy in the experiments and simulations with a 2 s
period wave train.
Fig. 17. Non-dimensionalised heave motion of the
buoy in the experiments and simulations with a 2 s
period wave train.
Fig. 18. Non-dimensionalised surge motion of the
buoy in the experiments and simulations with a 3 s
period wave train.
Fig. 19. Non-dimensionalised heave motion of the
buoy in the experiments and simulations with a 3 s
period wave train.
interaction of tethered floating structures with ocean waves. This
experimental data can also be used in other studies and is a potentially
valuable resource for others seeking to validate computational fluid dy-
namic models in similar situations. It will be made available on request.
Specifically in regard to the SPH model used here, vertical and hor-
izontal oscillation tests show that with sufficient resolution SPH simu-
lations can model the buoy's initial motion to within 2% error, however
even at quite high resolutions simulations possess additional damping of
the motion. As expected, as particle resolution is increased, the predicted
motion of the buoy becomes more accurate and the damping was
D.F. Gunn et al.
lessened. These tests suggest that to maintain accuracy of 10% or less in
heave and surge predictions, approximately 40–50 particles are required
to represent the typical length scale of a floating object (in the case here,
the diameter of a spherical buoy).
When observing the buoy's response to a wave train, a large ampli-
tude transient modulation in the surge trajectory was observed for the 1 s
period case, but not in the 2 or 3 s period cases. This transient motion was
under-predicted by the SPH simulations with a coarse particle spacing
corresponding to approximately 20 particles across a diameter (10 mm).
Increasing the resolution to that which corresponds to around 40 parti-
cles across a diameter (5 mm), led to much better prediction of the initial
transients. The smaller amplitude of the modulation in the SPH simula-
tions indicates that they are less sensitive to initial transient motions, and
this is also apparent in the 2 and 3 s period cases where the first surge
peak is under-predicted. For the 2 and 3 s period cases and only 20
particles across the buoy's diameter, the amplitude of the surge motion
was under-predicted by up to 25% and there was a phase error of up to
12%. In both cases the heave motions were more accurate with errors less
than 15%. Improved resolution is expected to significantly reduce these
discrepancies as was observed in the 1 s wave train simulations.
The simulations conducted show that SPH predictions of the buoy's
heave motion after the initial transient phase are usually reasonably
accurate. As the heave motion is dominated by the weight and buoyancy
forces on the buoy, the simulations indicate that SPH is capable of
accurately modelling the buoyancy forces. In contrast, the surge motion
of the buoy is not as well predicted by SPH at the resolution equivalent to
20 particles across the buoy (10 mm). At a finer resolution of 40 particles
across the buoy (5 mm), the error in the surge motion of the buoy is
reduced to approximately 10% in the wave train case.
The buoy used in this paper is a simple geometry intended for
providing a fundamental understanding of the wave-structure in-
teractions. A comparison between experiments and simulations has
shown that the SPH method is able to provide reasonably accurate pre-
dictions of the buoy's motion in response to incident waves, provided that
sufficient resolution is used. The recommendation here is to use a reso-
lution of no less than 40 particle spacings across a representative
dimension of a floating object. As seen in the results presented within, the
resolution required to obtain good results can often lead to large number
of particles that were not practical to undertake with the code available
to us. This strongly suggests the need to utilise massively parallel
implementations of SPH to make better use of existing technology.
Because SPH has distinct advantages in dealing with interfaces and fluid-
structure interaction, another direction that should be further developed
is the implementation of dynamically variable-resolution SPH. Such a
methodology would use higher particle resolution near the interface and
floating object, but coarser resolution further away, allowing larger do-
mains and good results to be obtained with more moderate numbers of
particles. These two enhancements would appear to be essential in the
further development of SPH as a strong contender for simulating real-
world applications.
The experimental data presented in this paper is available from the
corresponding author for use in validating other computational codes
and methods.
Acknowledgements
The first author gratefully acknowledges the scholarships from
Monash University and CSIRO that supported this research.
317
Ocean Engineering 156 (2018) 306–317
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