Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In fluid dynamics, wave shoaling is the effect by which surface waves, entering shallower water, change in wave height. It is caused by the fact that the group velocity , which is also the wave-energy transport velocity, decreases with water depth.
Shoaling can also refract waves, so the waves change direction. For example, if waves pass over a sloping bank which is shallower at one end than the other, then the shoaling effect will result in the waves slowing more at the shallow end. Thus, the wave fronts will refract, changing direction like light passing through a prism.
Simulation of periodic waves over an underwater shoal with a Boussinesq-type model. The waves propagate over an elliptic-shaped underwater shoal on a plane beach. This example combines several effects of waves and shallow water, including refraction, diffraction, shoaling and weak non-linearity.
Stokes drift – Average velocity of a fluid parcel in a gravity wave; Undertow (water waves) – Return flow below nearshore water waves. Ursell number – Dimensionless number indicating the nonlinearity of long surface gravity waves on a fluid layer. Wave shoaling – Effect by which surface waves entering shallower water change in wave height
In the shoaling zone, the wave nonlinearity increases due to the decreasing depth and the sinusoidal waves approaching the coast will transform into skewed waves. As waves propagate further towards the coast, the wave shape becomes more asymmetric due to wave breaking in the surf zone until the waves run up on the beach in the swash zone.
Propagation of shoaling long waves, showing the variation of wavelength and wave height with decreasing water depth.. In fluid dynamics, Green's law, named for 19th-century British mathematician George Green, is a conservation law describing the evolution of non-breaking, surface gravity waves propagating in shallow water of gradually varying depth and width.
Diffraction is one of the wave effects which can be described with Airy wave theory. Further, by using the WKBJ approximation, wave shoaling and refraction can be predicted. [2] Earlier attempts to describe surface gravity waves using potential flow were made by, among others, Laplace, Poisson, Cauchy and Kelland.
In fluid dynamics, wave setup is the increase in mean water level due to the presence of breaking waves. Similarly, wave setdown is a wave-induced decrease of the mean water level before the waves break (during the shoaling process). For short, the whole phenomenon is often denoted as wave setup, including both increase and decrease of mean ...