Numerical simulation of the wave interaction with mussel droppers

Mussel farms are common structure to culture shellfish in the open sea. A numerical model is developed to analyze the interaction between mussel farm and waves, in which the mussel droppers are simulated as porous media. The surface elevation around porous breakwater and the force on mussel dropper from physical model tests are applied to validate our numerical model for simulating the interaction between waves and porous media. Furthermore, the effect of spacing between two adjacent mussel droppers on the force acting on mussel droppers is discussed, and the interaction between mussel farm and oblique waves is also analyzed. The results indicate that the drag force on the downstream mussel droppers is decreased significantly with the decrease of spacing, and it is sensitive to the spacing when the spacing is smaller than three times the diameter of mussel dropper.