Open AccessPROBABILITY DENSITY FUNCTIONS OF BREAKING WAVES
Author(s) -
Edward B. Thornton,
G Schaeffer
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
proceedings of conference on coastal engineering/proceedings of ... conference on coastal engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2156-1028
pISSN - 0589-087X
DOI - 10.9753/icce.v16.28
Subject(s) - breaking wave , wave height , probability density function , significant wave height , mechanics , longitudinal wave , physics , circuit breaker , particle velocity , submarine pipeline , mechanical wave , geology , wind wave , wave propagation , mathematics , optics , statistics , geotechnical engineering , quantum mechanics , thermodynamics
Waves in the surf zone are a highly nonlinear process which is evident by the appearance of secondary waves. The secondary waves appear as strong peaks in the period PDFs corresponding to the first harmonic of the peak of the wave spectrum. The strong first harmonic period peak is also reflected in the highly correlated height and velocity PDFs. Due to the high probability of the secondary waves, the mean wave period for breakers is a poor descriptor of the average period of the offshore incident waves. The joint probability density functions for periods and heights of the breaking waves show high correlation (0.60-0.80) which says that greater wave periods are associated with larger breaker heights. The joint PDFs of period and particle velocity, and velocity and height, suggest that the maximum onshore particle velocities are correlated with both the wave periods and wave heights.