Wave Generation and Calibration at MARIN

Abstract For the generation of realistic wave conditions in model wave basins a wave generation tool is required to translate the specified wave elevation at the measurement location to the motion of the wave maker flaps. Literature is available on first order and also second order wavemaker theory, such as [1–4]. This literature describes the theory well, but leaves a significant gap in how to get from the theory to a practical implementation. Commercial software is available to generate waves in testing facilities, again without documentation on the practical details on how the computation is done. Within MARIN the objective was to obtain a wave generation solution that is transparent in what it does, easy to extend with new capabilities, and consistent between all basins. To achieve this, a dedicated software tool wave2flap has been developed in the past few years and is now in operation in MARIN’s wave basins. The implementation is mostly based on the theory as described by Schaeffer [3, 4]. In this paper, an overview of the implementation of first order and second order wave theory is presented. And the general functionalities of wave2flap are described. Furthermore, different approaches for wave calibration are compared and discussed as well as wave measurements with different wavemaker tools.