Longshore variations in nearshore wave processes at magilligan point,northern ireland

Magilligan Point is a recurved cuspate foreland at the mouth of Lough Foyle. Two wave regimes intersect in the estuary mouth and the manner of their interplay controls shoreline changes. Ocean swell waves from the N and NE are refracted around the recurve, losing both height and energy longshore. Width of the surf zone decreases and waves tend to steepen, although both these changes and wave refraction owe something to nearshore geometry. Angle of wave approach becomes more acute and a westerly flowing longshore current moves sand S and SW along the beach. Estuary waves from the S and SW are wind-driven with high-frequencies and steepnesses. They generate a northeasterly current which returns material N, but dies out as the waves become obliterated by nearshore attenuation and breaking of swell. It is possible to identify a time-averaged null-point where shoreline wave power is balanced, although this tends to shift over short periods causing rapid morphological changes. The existence of two independent, but counteractive cells ensures the long-term maintenance of the foreland, without requiring major or continuous supplies of fresh sediment.     

Rainfall on the Sea: Surface Renewals and Wave Damping

Rainfall on the sea surface causes a variety of effects on the molecular boundary layers. Two such effects are the reduction of the surface renewal time period and the damping of short gravity waves being responsible for wave breaking at higher wave frequencies. The effects described recently by Schlüssel et al. are revaluated in order to fully include the varying raindrop velocity. New parameterizations are derived, which differ from the previous ones, and a substantially higher kinetic energy flux due to rain is found. The general conclusions about the impact on the thermal molecular boundary do not change, although we point to several minor errors in the calculations of Schlüssel et al. (1997).     

Evaluating the stress intensity factors of anisotropic bimaterials using boundary element method

This paper presents a boundary element method (BEM) procedure for a linear elastic fracture mechanics analysis in two‐dimensional anisotropic bimaterials. In this formulation, a displacement integral equation is only collocated on the uncracked boundary, and a traction integral equation is only collocated on one side of the crack surface. A fundamental solution (Green's function) for anisotropic bimaterials is also derived and implemented into the boundary integral formulation so that except for the interfacial crack part, the discretization along the interface can be avoided. A special crack‐tip element is introduced to capture the exact crack‐tip behavior. A computer program using FORTRAN has been developed to effectively calculate the stress intensity factors of an anisotropic bimaterial. This BEM program has been verified to have a good accuracy with previous studies. In addition, a central cracked bimaterial Brazilian specimen constituting cement and gypsum is prepared to conduct the Brazilian test under diametral loading. The result shows that the numerical analysis can predict relatively well the direction of crack initiation and the path of crack propagation. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Numerical predictions of water–air wave slam using incompressible–compressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics

The high-speed impact between a body and water is an important practical problem, whether due to wave impact on a structural deck or wall, or due to a moving body such as a ship or aircraft hitting water. The very high pressures exerted are difficult to predict and the role of air may be significant. In this paper, numerical simulations are undertaken to investigate the impact of a rigid horizontal plate onto a wave crest and, in the limit, onto a flat water surface. A two-phase incompressible–compressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method for water and air, respectively, is applied where the water phase imposes kinematics on the air phase at the air–water interface and the air phase imposes pressures on the water at the interface. Results are compared with experimental measurements undertaken using a drop rig positioned over a wave flume so that a horizontal plate impacts the water surface in free flight. Numerical predictions of impact pressure are quite accurate; air is shown to have a significant cushioning effect for impact on to flat water and this reduces for waves as the ratio of wave height to wavelength increases.     

Power capture performance of an oscillating-body WEC with nonlinear snap through PTO systems in irregular waves

Compared with solar and wind energy, wave energy is a kind of renewable resource which is enormous and still under development. In order to utilize the wave energy, various types of wave energy converters (WECs) have been proposed and studied. And oscillating-body WEC is widely used for offshore deployment. For this type of WEC, the oscillating motion of the floater is converted into electricity by the power take off (PTO) system, which is usually mathematically simplified as a linear spring and a damper. The linear PTO system is characteristic of frequency-dependent response and the energy absorption is less powerful for off resonance conditions. Thus a nonlinear snap through PTO system consisting of two symmetrically oblique springs and a linear damper is applied. A nonlinear parameter γ is defined as the ratio of half of the horizontal distance between the two oblique springs to the original length of both springs. JONSWAP spectrum is utilized to generate the time series of irregular waves. Time domain method is used to establish the motion equation of the oscillating-body WEC in irregular waves. And state space model is applied to replace the convolution term in the time domain motion equation. Based on the established motion equation, the motion response of both the linear and nonlinear WEC is numerically calculated using 4th Runge–Kutta method, after which the captured power can be obtained. Then the influences of wave parameters such as peak frequency, significant wave height, damping coefficient of the PTO system and the nonlinear parameter γ on the power capture performance of the nonlinear WEC is discussed in detail. Results show that compared with linear PTO system, the nonlinear snap through PTO system can increase the power captured by the oscillating body WEC in irregular waves.     

Modelling of the spatial evolution of extreme laboratory wave crest and trough heights with the NLS-type equations

The statistical properties of long-crested nonlinear wave time series measured in an offshore basin have been analyzed in different aspects such as the distributions of surface elevation, wave crest, wave trough, and wave period. Comparison with linear, second-order and third-order theoretical models indicates that although bound wave effects also contribute to the deviation from a Gaussian process, it is the modulational instability that primarily determines the discrepancy in the evolution process in the presence of strong nonlinearity. Interestingly enough, wave crest is more sensitive to the quasi-resonant four-wave interaction effect than wave trough and the scaled maximal wave crest presents a linear regression model with the coefficient of kurtosis. Meanwhile, the estimation of the observed statistical properties is reconstructed on the basis of an ensemble of 100 wave series simulated by the NLS-type equations and compared favourably with the experimental results in most cases. Moreover, with the increased third-order nonlinear effect the difference between NLS and Dysthe simulations is enlarged and mainly reflected on the distribution of wave crest.     

Comparison of Near Coastal Significant Wave Height Measurements from SARAL/AltiKa with Wave Rider Buoys in the Indian Region

Significant Wave Height (SWH) measurement data from the AltiKa Radar Altimeter (RA) for the first 13 cycles of satellite coverage are compared with the SWH from Wave Rider Buoys (WRB) located at nine stations along the Indian coast to assess the performance of the altimeter over the coastal region. AltiKa SWH observations within a 30-minute interval and 50 km distance from WRBs are found to be over estimated by 6%, the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) is 0.36 m, the Scatter Index (SI) is 26%, and the correlation coefficient (r) is 0.91. Relaxing the distance criteria by 50 km leads to increase in RMSE and deterioration of r to 0.89. There is a marked difference in the statistics on the comparison pairs pooled separately for the buoys near west and east coasts, with the latter showing RMSE error 26% more than the former. The method of Cressman weights adopted to correct for the errors arising out of the temporal and spatial differences in altimeter and buoy data comparison pairs resulted in reduction of RMSE by 5% and 25%, respectively, for the 30-minute and 50 km criteria and 4% and 56% for the 30-minute and 100 km criteria.     

一种高频雷达回波谱反演海浪的新算法

在高频地波雷达海浪谱反演问题中,广泛采用的Barrick后向散射公式属于第一类非线性Fredholm积分方程。此类积分方程的解在本质上是不适定的,加之高频雷达二阶回波信号信噪比较低,使得反演海浪谱存在解不稳定的问题。本文提出一种稳定且低复杂度的反演算法,此算法首先根据高频雷达一阶回波谱测量海浪方向,并将其引入积分方程求解过程,减少求解变量的个数,降低反演算法的复杂度。为解决反演结果不稳定的问题,使用Tikhonov正则化方法并利用广义交叉验证法(GCV)确定其正则化系数。通过在不同测试条件下对反演算法的仿真测试分析,表明此方法具有运算量小、稳定性好的特点。     

西准噶尔蛇绿岩:古大洋俯冲增生过程的记录

蛇绿岩记录了大洋岩石圈形成、演化、消亡的全过程,是刻画区域板块构造和洋 陆格局演化的关键证据。本文通过系统梳理前人相关研究,总结西准噶尔蛇绿岩最新研究成果,探讨大陆地壳增生方式、恢复古大洋演化历史,从而对西准噶尔构造体制转化提供新制约。西准噶尔地区发育多条震旦纪—石炭纪被构造肢解的蛇绿岩带,具有典型的岩块 基质结构,绝大多数蛇绿岩包括正常洋壳组分和海山/大洋高原残片,其中基性岩具有MORB和OIB的地球化学特征。基于前人研究,本文认为在西准噶尔古大洋发育过程中,发育不同时代与地幔柱有关的海山/大洋高原,同时存在增生型和侵蚀型两类汇聚板块边界。另外,大洋高原增生不仅是大陆地壳增生的有效途径之一,还可能诱发俯冲极性反转和传递。而在大洋高原形成初期,还可能存在地幔柱诱发俯冲起始机制。     

Barothropic relaxing media under pressure perturbations: Nonlinear dynamics

In this paper, we delve into the dynamics of a barothropic relaxing medium under pressure perturbations originating from blast wave explosions in the milieu. Analyzing the problem within the viewpoint of the Lyakhov formalism of geodynamic systems, we derive a complex-valued nonlinear evolution equation which models the wave propagation of the pressure perturbations within the barothropic medium. As a result, we find that the previous system can be circularly polarized and hence support traveling rotating pressure excitations which profiles strongly depend upon their angular momenta. In the wake of these results, we address some physical implications of the findings alongside their potential applications.