Stephan T. Grilli and R. Subramanya and Ib A. Svendsen and J. Veeramony
Associate Professor Graduate
student Professor
Graduate
student
Department of Ocean Eng. URI Department
of Civil Eng. UoD
niversity of Rhode Island University
of Delaware
Narragansett, RI 02882, USA
Newark,
DE 19716, USA
Abstract :
Shoaling of solitary waves on both gentle (1:35) and steeper
slopes (< 1:6.50) is analyzed up to breaking using both a fully nonlinear
wave model and high accuracy laboratory experiments. For the mildest slope,
close agreement is obtained between both approaches up to breaking, where
waves become very asymmetric and breaking indices reach almost twice the
value for the largest stable symmetric wave. Bottom friction does not seem
to affect the results at all. Wave celerity decreases during shoaling and
slightly increases before breaking. At breaking, the crest particle velocity
is almost horizontal and reaches 90% of the crest celerity, which is two
to three times larger than the bottom velocity. The NSW equations and the
Boussinesq approximation both fail to predict these results. Finally, shoaling
rates for various wave heights and bottom slopes differ from the predictions
of Green's or Boussinesq shoaling laws. On the mildest slope, shoaling
rates roughly follow a ``two-zone'' model proposed earlier but on steeper
slopes reflection becomes significant and wave heights change little during
shoaling.
Keywords :
Solitary wave propagation; wave shoaling; wave breaking; wave runup on beaches; long wave theory; fully nonlinear waves; experimental modeling of waves; numerical modeling of waves; boundary element method.