Energetics analysis of solitary waves using a multi-layer model

This study investigates the performance of a vertically-Lagrangian multi-layer model on numerically simulating shoaling and breaking two-dimensional solitary waves during both the breaking and post-breaking processes. The energy dissipation of the breaking event for the multi-layer waves is analyzed and compared to prior direct numerical simulation work with the same bathymetric and wave cases. It shows very similar data collapse to shallow-water inertial theory. For post-breaking behavior, bore characteristics are compared to an experimental study of bores formed from breaking solitary waves and similar results are found. While the multi-layer method was not found to behave sufficiently well for direct force measurement at a vertical wall, the resulting bore characteristic behavior is found to be sufficient for use in theoretical estimations of the impact force on the wall. These findings in this study suggest that vertically-Lagrangian multilayer models resolve propagating bores sufficiently well when trying to estimate dynamic loads on vertical seawalls with minimal model tuning. • A multi-layer model is used to simulate 2-D waves which shoal and break in a shallow-water bathymetry. • Energetics from the multi-layer results are compared to direct numerical simulations from a prior study and good agreement to dissipation rate behavior is found. • The multi-layer model is used to simulate laboratory scale broken-wave bores which impact a vertical wall, and the resulting multi-layer bores are found to have similar characteristics to that of experiments from the literature. • A theoretical vertical wall impact force prediction for bores is nondimensionalized and collapse is found for both current multi-layer data and experimental data from literature.