Abstract

A volume of fluid (VOF) technique has been developed and coupled with an incompressible Euler/Navier–Stokes solver operating on adaptive, unstructured grids to simulate the interactions of extreme waves and three‐dimensional structures. The present implementation follows the classic VOF implementation for the liquid–gas system, considering only the liquid phase. Extrapolation algorithms are used to obtain velocities and pressure in the gas region near the free surface. The VOF technique is validated against the classic dam‐break problem, as well as series of 2D sloshing experiments and results from SPH calculations. These and a series of other examples demonstrate that the ability of the present approach to simulate violent free surface flows with strong nonlinear behaviour.