A Numerical Simulation of a Plunging Breaking Wave

This article describes the fluid dynamics video, "A Numerical Simulation of a Plunging Breaking Wave", which was submitted to the gallery of fluid motion at the 2009 APS/DFD conference. The simulation was of a deep-water plunging breaking wave. It was a two-phase calculation which used a Volume of Fluid (VOF) method to simulate the interface between the two immiscible fluids. Surface tension and viscous effects were not considered. The initial wave was generated by applying a spatio-temporal pressure forcing on the free surface. The video shows the 50% isocontour of the volume fraction from several different perspectives. Significant air entrainment is observed as well as the presence of stream-wise vortex structures.