Wave runup on a surging vertical cylinder in regular waves

•Phase between the surge motion and incident wave has strong effect on the wave runup.•Amplification of wave runup was observed when the relative phase is close to 0 or 1.•An empirical equation for predicting the maximum runup ratio is proposed. The wave runup caused by a vertical cylinder surging in regular waves is studied both experimentally and numerically. The so-called DualSPHysics Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) code is used for the 3-D numerical modelling. A wide range of cylinder sizes and wave conditions is investigated with results comparing favourably between the experimental and SPH model under both fixed and forced-surge conditions. The experimental and SPH results are further used to predict the maximum runup amplification, in particular the ratio of the runup caused by the surging cylinder to that of the fixed, over the phase difference between the incident wave and surge motion. This maximum runup ratio has been analysed for its dependence on factors such as wave steepness, wave scattering and surge amplitude. An empirical equation is proposed for predicting the maximum runup ratio from known incident wave and surge conditions. Comparison with results from linear solvers suggests that the linear solvers under-predict the full nonlinear runup by a factor of 1.3–1.5.