Evolution of Wave Characteristics during Wind-Wave Generation

TL;DR

This paper uses direct numerical simulation to study the evolution of ocean surface waves under turbulent wind forcing, revealing the transition from linear to exponential growth and wave nonlinearity at later stages.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the wave generation mechanism by analyzing detailed DNS data, advancing the theoretical understanding of wind-wave evolution.

Findings

Surface elevation variance transitions from linear to exponential growth.

Wave nonlinearity becomes significant at later stages.

DNS reveals detailed wave evolution under turbulent wind conditions.

Abstract

The generation of ocean surface waves by wind is a classic fluid mechanics problem whose theoretical study dates back to 1957, when the two seminal papers by Phillips and Miles were published in the incipient Journal of Fluid Mechanics. Comprehensively understanding the mechanism of wind-wave generation is of crucial importance to many naval applications. Here, we present the recent developments of our work on this profound and long-standing problem. We perform a wave phase-resolved direct numerical simulation (DNS) of the turbulent airflow over an initially calm water surface that responds dynamically to the wind forcing. Our simulation reveals the evolution of the surface wave statistics over the entire wind-wave generation process. As the wave fluctuations grow with time under the turbulent wind forcing, the temporal growth behavior of the surface elevation variance transitions from linear growth to exponential growth. Moreover, surface waves exhibit nonlinearity at the late stage of simulation when the wave amplitude is significant enough to alter the airflow field. Based on this rich DNS dataset, we systematically study the underlying mechanism and report several advances in the theoretical analysis of this problem.