Extreme long waves over a varying bathymetry

2019 ◽  
Vol 878 ◽  
pp. 481-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
James G. Herterich ◽  
Frédéric Dias

Recent modelling work has shown that abrupt bathymetric transitions can produce dramatic amplifications of long waves, under the influence of both nonlinearity and dispersion. Here, the evolution of wave packets towards a vertical wall over a varying bathymetry is investigated with a one-dimensional conformal-mapping spectral code. In this system, wave breaking, runup and reflection, wave interference and bathymetric effects are highlighted. Wave breaking is examined with respect to geometric, kinematic and energetic conditions, with consistent results. The breaking strength is characterized for spilling and plunging based on initial wave period and amplitude. Non-breaking waves are amplified by reflection, interference and the bathymetry leading to large runups. In a typical example inspired by a real-world bathymetry, the maximum runup amplification approaches a factor of 12 – large enough for a 3 m amplitude wave to overtop a 30 m cliff.

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (32) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Jana Orszaghova ◽  
Alistair G. L. Borthwick ◽  
Paul H. Taylor

A one-dimensional hybrid numerical model is presented of a shallow-water flume with an incorporated piston paddle. The hybrid model is based on the improved Boussinesq equations by Madsen and Sorensen (1992) and the nonlinear shallow water equations. It is suitable for breaking and non-breaking waves and requires only two adjustable parameters: a friction coefficient and a wave breaking parameter. The applicability of the model is demonstrated by simulating laboratory experiments of solitary waves involving runup at a plane beach and overtopping of a laboratory seawall. The predicted free surface profiles, maximum runup and overtopping volumes agree very well with the measured values.


Author(s):  
Reyna Guadalupe RAMIREZ DE LA TORRE ◽  
Atle Jensen

One of the environmental difficulties of exploring the polar regions is marine icing. The understanding of this phenomenon is important for the safety of installations, ships and people that operates in these environments. One of the main sources of marine icing is wave breaking. Therefore, experimental and field work has been conducted to understand the break-up of waves in different situations and some explanation have been proposed to the instabilities that create the spray formation. In this work, two different situations of wave breaking were studied: 1. Solitary waves were created and steepened by the use of a beach. The waves impacted on a vertical wall with different wall heights. 2. Violent plunging breakers were created by a focusing wave train and a sloping beach. The main objective of these experiments was to quantify the production of droplets from the impact by using Particle Tracking Velocimetry in 3 dimensions. It was found that the initial distribution of droplet sizes is similar in both experiments. These distributions are compared with previous studies, where the distribution of droplet sizes in different experimental cases were approximated by lognormal, Weibull or G-distributions respectively.


Author(s):  
Sergey Kuznetsov ◽  
Sergey Kuznetsov ◽  
Yana Saprykina ◽  
Yana Saprykina ◽  
Boris Divinskiy ◽  
...  

On the base of experimental data it was revealed that type of wave breaking depends on wave asymmetry against the vertical axis at wave breaking point. The asymmetry of waves is defined by spectral structure of waves: by the ratio between amplitudes of first and second nonlinear harmonics and by phase shift between them. The relative position of nonlinear harmonics is defined by a stage of nonlinear wave transformation and the direction of energy transfer between the first and second harmonics. The value of amplitude of the second nonlinear harmonic in comparing with first harmonic is significantly more in waves, breaking by spilling type, than in waves breaking by plunging type. The waves, breaking by plunging type, have the crest of second harmonic shifted forward to one of the first harmonic, so the waves have "saw-tooth" shape asymmetrical to vertical axis. In the waves, breaking by spilling type, the crests of harmonic coincides and these waves are symmetric against the vertical axis. It was found that limit height of breaking waves in empirical criteria depends on type of wave breaking, spectral peak period and a relation between wave energy of main and second nonlinear wave harmonics. It also depends on surf similarity parameter defining conditions of nonlinear wave transformations above inclined bottom.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 520
Author(s):  
Zhenyu Liu ◽  
Zhen Guo ◽  
Yuzhe Dou ◽  
Fanyu Zeng

Most offshore wind turbines are installed in shallow water and exposed to breaking waves. Previous numerical studies focusing on breaking wave forces generally ignored the seabed permeability. In this paper, a numerical model based on Volume-Averaged Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes equations (VARANS) is employed to reveal the process of a solitary wave interacting with a rigid pile over a permeable slope. Through applying the Forchheimer saturated drag equation, effects of seabed permeability on fluid motions are simulated. The reliability of the present model is verified by comparisons between experimentally obtained data and the numerical results. Further, 190 cases are simulated and the effects of different parameters on breaking wave forces on the pile are studied systematically. Results indicate that over a permeable seabed, the maximum breaking wave forces can occur not only when waves break just before the pile, but also when a “secondary wave wall” slams against the pile, after wave breaking. With the initial wave height increasing, breaking wave forces will increase, but the growth can decrease as the slope angle and permeability increase. For inclined piles around the wave breaking point, the maximum breaking wave force usually occurs with an inclination angle of α = −22.5° or 0°.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 3618
Author(s):  
Stanislav Ermakov ◽  
Vladimir Dobrokhotov ◽  
Irina Sergievskaya ◽  
Ivan Kapustin

The role of wave breaking in microwave backscattering from the sea surface is a problem of great importance for the development of theories and methods on ocean remote sensing, in particular for oil spill remote sensing. Recently it has been shown that microwave radar return is determined by both Bragg and non-Bragg (non-polarized) scattering mechanisms and some evidence has been given that the latter is associated with wave breaking, in particular, with strong breaking such as spilling or plunging. However, our understanding of mechanisms of the action of strong wave breaking on small-scale wind waves (ripples) and thus on the radar return is still insufficient. In this paper an effect of suppression of radar backscattering after strong wave breaking has been revealed experimentally and has been attributed to the wind ripple suppression due to turbulence generated by strong wave breaking. The experiments were carried out in a wind wave tank where a frequency modulated wave train of intense meter-decimeter-scale surface waves was generated by a mechanical wave maker. The wave train was compressed according to the gravity wave dispersion relation (“dispersive focusing”) into a short-wave packet at a given distance from the wave maker. Strong wave breaking with wave crest overturning (spilling) occurred for one or two highest waves in the packet. Short decimeter-centimeter-scale wind waves were generated at gentle winds, simultaneously with the long breaking waves. A Ka-band scatterometer was used to study microwave backscattering from the surface waves in the tank. The scatterometer looking at the area of wave breaking was mounted over the tank at a height of about 1 m above the mean water level, the incidence angle of the microwave radiation was about 50 degrees. It has been obtained that the radar return in the presence of short wind waves is characterized by the radar Doppler spectrum with a peak roughly centered in the vicinity of Bragg wave frequencies. The radar return was strongly enhanced in a wide frequency range of the radar Doppler spectrum when a packet of long breaking waves arrived at the area irradiated by the radar. After the passage of breaking waves, the radar return strongly dropped and then slowly recovered to the initial level. Measurements of velocities in the upper water layer have confirmed that the attenuation of radar backscattering after wave breaking is due to suppression of short wind waves by turbulence generated in the breaking zone. A physical analysis of the effect has been presented.


2010 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 434-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sukyoung Lee

Abstract A two-layer quasigeostrophic model is used to study the equilibration of baroclinic waves. In this model, if the background flow is relaxed toward a jetlike profile, a finite-amplitude baroclinic wave solution can be realized in both supercritical and subcritical regions of the model’s parameter space. Analyses of the model equations and numerical model calculations indicate that the finite-amplitude wave equilibration hinges on the breaking of Rossby waves before they reach their critical latitude. This “jetward” wave breaking results in an increase in the upper-layer wave generation and a reduction in the vertical phase tilt. This change in the phase tilt has a substantial impact on the Ekman pumping, as it weakens the damping on the lower-layer wave for some parameter settings and enables the Ekman pumping to serve as a source of wave growth at other settings. Together, these processes can account for the O(1)-amplitude wave equilibration. From a potential vorticity (PV) perspective, the wave breaking reduces the meridional scale of the upper-layer eddy PV flux, which destabilizes the mean flow. This is followed by a strengthening of the lower-layer eddy PV flux, which weakens the lower-layer PV gradient and constrains the growth of the lower-layer eddy PV. The same jetward wave breaking focuses the upper-layer PV flux toward the jet center where the upper-layer PV gradient is greatest. This results in an intensification of the upper-layer eddy PV relative to lower-layer eddy PV. Because of this large ratio, the upper-layer eddy PV plays the primary role in inducing the upper- and lower-layer eddy streamfunction fields, decreasing the vertical phase tilt. As a result, the Ekman pumping on the eddies is weakened, and for some parameter settings the Ekman pumping can even act as a wave source, contributing toward O(1)-amplitude wave equilibration. By reducing the horizontal shear of the zonal wind, the same wave breaking process weakens the barotropic decay, which also contributes to the wave amplification.


Author(s):  
C.E Blenkinsopp ◽  
J.R Chaplin

This paper describes detailed measurements and analysis of the time-varying distribution of void fractions in three different breaking waves under laboratory conditions. The measurements were made with highly sensitive optical fibre phase detection probes and document the rapid spatial and temporal evolutions of both the bubble plume generated beneath the free surface and the splashes above. Integral properties of the measured void fraction fields reveal a remarkable degree of similarity between characteristics of the two-phase flow in different breaker types as they evolve with time. Depending on the breaker type, the energy expended in entraining air and generating splash accounts for a minimum of between 6.5 and 14% of the total energy dissipated during wave breaking.


1988 ◽  
Vol 1 (21) ◽  
pp. 102 ◽  
Author(s):  
E.W. Bijker ◽  
C.A. De Bruyn

Tests have been performed on a vertical pile subject to current only and to a combination of current with normal waves and current with breaking waves. The scour around the pile produced by current only is decreased by normal short waves superimposed upon that current and increased when breaking waves are superimposed upon the current. After analysis of the velocity profiles in the undisturbed area upstream of the pile and next to the pile, the following explanation is found for this phenomenon. When normal short waves are superimposed upon a current, the bottom shear stress of the combination of current with waves is increased more in the undisturbed area than next to the pile in the scour area. This results in a decrease of the scour around the pile. Due to the large values of the orbital velocity under breaking waves this effect is reversed for the combination of a current with breaking and relatively long waves. This results in an increase of the scour around the pile.


1988 ◽  
Vol 1 (21) ◽  
pp. 46
Author(s):  
Scott L. Douglass ◽  
J. Richard Weggel

The influence of wind on nearshore breaking waves was investigated in a laboratory wave tank. Breaker location, geometry, and type depended upon the wind acting on the wave as it broke. Onshore winds tended to cause waves to break earlier, in deeper water, and to spill: offshore winds tended to cause waves to break later, in shallower water, and to plunge. A change in wind direction from offshore to onshore increased the surf zone width by up to 100%. Wind's effect was greatest for waves which were near the transition between breaker types in the absence of wind. For onshore winds, it was observed that microscale breaking can initiate spilling breaking by providing a perturbation on the crest of the underlying wave as it shoals.


1993 ◽  
Vol 115 (3) ◽  
pp. 621-630 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. F. Jones ◽  
J. Cai

We present a numerical study of transient natural convection in a rectangular open thermosyphon having asymmetric thermal boundary conditions. One vertical wall of the thermosyphon is either heated by constant heat flux (“warmup”) or cooled by convection to the surroundings (“cooldown”). The top of the thermosyphon is open to a large reservoir of fluid at constant temperature. The vorticity, energy, and stream-function equations are solved by finite differences on graded mesh. The ADI method and iteration with overrelaxation are used. We find that the thermosyphon performs quite differently during cooldown compared with warmup. In cooldown, flows are mainly confined to the thermosyphon with little momentum and heat exchange with the reservoir. For warmup, the circulation resembles that for a symmetrically heated thermosyphon where there is a large exchange with the reservoir. The difference is explained by the temperature distributions. For cooldown, the fluid becomes stratified and the resulting stability reduces motion. In contrast, the transient temperature for warmup does not become stratified but generally exhibits the behavior of a uniformly heated vertical plate. For cooldown and Ra > 104, time-dependent heat transfer is predicted by a closed-form expression for one-dimensional conduction, which shows that Nu → Bi1/2/A in the steady-state limit. For warmup, transient heat transfer behaves as one-dimensional conduction for early times and at steady state and for Ra* ≥ 105, can be approximated as that for a uniformly heated vertical plate.


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