The Second Order Statistics of High Waves in Wind Sea and Swell

Abstract

The statistics of extreme wave crest elevation and wave height have been calculated for realistic, directionally spread sea and swell using a probabilistic method tested and described previously. The nonlinearity of steep waves is modeled to the second order using Sharma and Dean kinematics, and a response surface (reliability type) method is used to deduce the crest elevation or wave height corresponding to a given probability of exceedance. The effects of various combinations of sea and swell are evaluated. As expected, in all cases, nonlinearity makes extreme crests higher than the corresponding linear ones. The nonlinear effects on the wave height are relatively small.