The role of bandwidth in setting the breaking slope threshold of deep-water focusing wave packets

Abstract

We examine the role of wave packet bandwidth in modulating the breaking slope threshold for focusing deep-water surface gravity wave packets. Using a fully nonlinear potential flow solver and laboratory experiments, we show that the slope threshold may be strongly modulated by the wave packet bandwidth. We propose a new breaking threshold parameterization that shows that the slope threshold may be modulated by more than a factor of two by changes in the bandwidth. This has implications for parameterizations of the properties of the breaking induced flow (e.g., the energy dissipation) as they do not currently account for these effects.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Nov 01, 2021
Source ID
10.1063/5.0072166

Entities

People

  • David Llewellyn Smith
  • Ethan Murray
  • Luc Lenain
  • Nick Pizzo

Organizations

  • NASA Earth Science
  • National Science Foundation
  • Office of Naval Research
  • University of California
  • University of Colorado

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Atmospheric Science / Meteorology, specifically Wind Wave Turbulence.
  • Computer Networking
  • Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Modeling, Data Assimilation, and Flux Boundary Layers