Breaking Waves

Title: Breaking Waves
Creator: Power, Hannah E.
Relation: Sandy Beach Morphodynamics p. 103-130
Publisher Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102927-5.00006-0
Publisher: Elsevier
Resource Type: book chapter
Date: 2020
Description: Wave breaking on sandy beaches occurs as waves encounter decreasing depth and is the primary mechanism for wave energy dissipation. The initial breaking process occurs when the depth becomes too shallow for a stable waveform to exist and can also be influenced by the beach slope. On natural beaches, the rate of wave height decay varies with beach conditions and, in unsaturated surf zones, with offshore wave height. The distribution of individual wave heights varies across the surf zone and typically narrows as depth decreases. The natural variability in the wave height distribution shifts the break-point location for individual waves such that the proportion of waves that are broken progressively increases across the surf zone. There are a variety of approaches to modelling wave energy dissipation due to breaking from simple, parametric approaches, to more complex and computationally intensive approaches.
Subject: wave breaking; surf zone; parametric wave modelling; wave speed; break point; wave height distribution
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1464877
Identifier: uon:47135
Identifier: ISBN:9780081029275
Language: eng

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