Resumen
The traditional small-scale marine engineering experiments that are performed under normal gravity fields always encounter one stubborn difficulty related to full-scale prototype models. However, the difficulty can be resolved by centrifuge experiments that can generate hypergravity fields in which the centrifuge acceleration is many times greater than the gravity acceleration. In this study, the generation of solitary waves in hypergravity fields is proposed using solitary wavemaker theory and scaling laws. A series of case simulations are performed under four different gravity fields (1 g, 30 g, 50 g, and 100 g, where g is the gravity acceleration). These cases are presented and discussed in detail to understand and verify the scaling laws and the stability of the solitary wave during its generation and propagation within hypergravity fields. The numerical results show that the waveform and the static pressure field that are obtained during the simulations performed under different gravity fields agree well at the macroscale. Since the velocity field is sensitive to wave attenuation, time lag, fluid viscosity and surface tension, some discrepancies can be found in the velocity field. It should be noted that the fluid viscosity and surface tension have influence on the wave attenuation. However, wave attenuation and time lag can be offset by a well-designed incident wave condition.