Abstract
Analytical expressions for the probabilities of both wave breaking and of the fractional energy dissipation losses generated by wave breaking, are derived on the basis of a joint distribution for wave frequencies and amplitudes. Direct effects of wind forcing on wave breaking are explicitly considered in the form of Phillips and Banner (1974) mechanism. The results are found to depend on the wave spectrum band width parameter θ and the characteristic frequency σ0 (definitions follow), and are not restricted to narrow-band spectrum cases. When the computed total energy dissipation losses (per average wave period) are used together with appropriate wave growth models to predict the fraction of wind momentum and energy fluxes transferred to water waves, the results appear to be in good agreement with their experimental counterparts. These expressions are also compared to other recent work on wave breaking and their similarities and differences are discussed.
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© 1988 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Papadimitrakis, Y.A., Huang, N.E., Bliven, L.F., Long, S.R. (1988). An Estimate of Wave Breaking Probability for Deep Water Waves. In: Kerman, B.R. (eds) Sea Surface Sound. NATO ASI Series, vol 238. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3017-9_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3017-9_6
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