Wave interaction and overwash with a flexible plate by smoothed particle hydrodynamics

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. The motion of a flexible elastic plate under wave action is simulated, and the well–known phenomena of overwash is investigated. The fluid motion is modelled by smoothed particle hydrodynamics, a mesh-free solution method which, while computationally demanding, is flexible and able to simulate complex fluid flows. The freely floating plate is modelled using linear thin plate elasticity plus the nonlinear rigid body motions. This assumption limits the elastic plate motion to be small but is valid for many cases both in geophysics and in the laboratory. The principal conclusion is that the inclusion of flexural motion causes significantly less overwash than that which occurs for a rigid plate.