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Wind-induced changes to surface gravity wave shape in shallow water

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2021

Thomas Zdyrski*
Affiliation:
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD, La Jolla, CA 92092-0209, USA
Falk Feddersen
Affiliation:
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD, La Jolla, CA 92092-0209, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: tzdyrski@uscd.edu

Abstract

Wave shape (e.g. wave skewness and asymmetry) impacts sediment transport, remote sensing and ship safety. Previous work showed that wind affects wave shape in intermediate and deep water. Here, we investigate the effect of wind on wave shape in shallow water through a wind-induced surface pressure for different wind speeds and directions to provide the first theoretical description of wind-induced shape changes. A multiple-scale analysis of long waves propagating over a shallow, flat bottom and forced by a Jeffreys-type surface pressure yields a forward or backward Korteweg–de Vries (KdV)–Burgers equation for the wave profile, depending on the wind direction. The evolution of a symmetric, solitary-wave initial condition is calculated numerically. The resulting wave grows (decays) for onshore (offshore) wind and becomes asymmetric, with the rear face showing the largest shape changes. The wave profile's deviation from a reference solitary wave is primarily a bound wave and trailing, dispersive, decaying tail. The onshore wind increases the wave's energy and skewness with time while decreasing the wave's asymmetry, with the opposite holding for offshore wind. The corresponding wind speeds are shown to be physically realistic, and the shape changes are explained as slow growth followed by rapid evolution according to the unforced KdV equation.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. Solitary-wave evolution under (a) onshore and (b) offshore wind-induced surface pressure in the frame of the unforced solitary wave. Non-dimensional wave height $\eta /h$ versus non-dimensional distance $x/h$ for $\varepsilon =0.1$, $\mu _E = 0.6$, $\left |P k_E/(\rho _w g \varepsilon )\right | = 0.25$ and non-dimensional slow times $t'_1 = t \varepsilon \sqrt {gh} k_E = 0$, $5$ and $10$, as indicated in the legend. Only a subset of the full spatial domain is shown. The arrows denote the wave propagation (phase speed) and wind direction.

Figure 1

Figure 2. The non-dimensional profile change $\Delta \eta /h$ between the surface profile and reference solitary wave (2.19) under (a) onshore and (b) offshore Jeffreys forcing versus non-dimensional reference wave-centred distance $\tilde {x}/h$. Results are shown for $\varepsilon =0.1$, $\mu _E = 0.6$, $\left |P k_E/(\rho _w g \varepsilon )\right | = 0.25$ and non-dimensional slow times $t'_1 = t \varepsilon \sqrt {gh} k_E = 0$, $5$ and $10$, as indicated in the legend. Only a subset of the full spatial domain is shown. The arrows denote the direction of wave propagation (phase speed) or wind direction.

Figure 2

Figure 3. Solitary-wave shape statistics under onshore and offshore Jeffreys forcing versus non-dimensional slow time $t'_1 = t \varepsilon \sqrt {gh} k_E = 0\text {--}10$. The (a) energy (normalized by the initial energy), (b) skewness (normalized by the initial skewness) and (c) asymmetry are defined in (2.21a–c). Results are shown for $\varepsilon =0.1$, $\mu _E = 0.6$ and pressure magnitude $|P k_E/(\rho _w g \varepsilon )|$ up to $0.25$, as indicated in the legend. The solid black line is the unforced case, $P = 0$, and shows no growth or asymmetry and a constant skewness.