ON THE PROBABILITY OF UNIDIRECTIONAL NONLINEAR EXTREME WAVES IN THE PRESENCE OF WAVE REFLECTION

Abstract

Extreme waves are known to appear in different water depth regimes, and their focusing mechanisms have been intensively studied over the last decades. This experimental study aims to improve understanding of rogue wave statistics when wave reflections are at play. A series of unidirectional JONSWAP wave trains have been generated in a wave flume while varying the water depth and beach inclination slope. The data collected near the beach installation suggests a general decrease in extreme wave probability with the increase of the beach inclination, thus, with the increase of wave reflection. In deep-water, the numerical simulations based on the coupled nonlinear Schrodinger equation, which accounts for the presence of reflective waves, show a very good agreement with the experimental data. The irregular wave measurements in the presence of wave reflection indicate that the decrease in probability of exceedance, which correlates with the decrease in the value of kurtosis, is due to the weakening of third-order effects. When the water depth is decreased to a finite depth regime, we can observe an increase of extreme events, which we attribute to the change of the wave breaking threshold. However, no substantial rogue waves have been observed below the dimensionless depth kh value of 1.36. Then again, nonlinear effects always remain relevant and at play in all cases considered.