| Abstract: | For morphological studies in coastal areas the wave-driven currents are often of primary importance. As the computation of the wave-driven current field requires the computation of the driving forces from a wave propagation model, the quality of these forces is basic to the success of the morphological study. It is shown in the paper that, under the common conditions of slowly varying wave fields, the driving force per unit mass is closely proportional to the wave energy dissipation per unit area and that diffraction-related terms give insignificant contributions. This result holds good for wave fields without current refraction. Examples show that formulation of the driving forces in terms of the wave dissipation yields more trustworthy results than those obtained by numerical differentiation of the radiation stress tensor. |
