Experiments on the generation of small water waves by wind

Abstract

The generation and growth of small water waves by a turbulent wind has been investigated in a laboratory channel. The evolution of these oscillations with fetch was traced from their inception with amplitudes in the micron range under conditions of steady air flow. The experiments revealed that the waves are generated at all air velocities in small bursts consisting of groups of waves of nearly constant frequency. After travelling for some distance downstream, these wavelets attain sufficient amplitude to become visible. For this condition, a wind speed critical to raise waves is well defined. After the first wavelets appear, two new stages of growth are identified at longer fetches if the air speed remains unchanged. In the first of these, the wave component associated with the spectral peak grows faster with fetch than any other part of the wave spectrum of the initial waves until its amplitude attains an upper limit consistent with Phillips's equilibrium range, which appears to be universal for wind waves on any body of water. If the air flow is not changed, then the frequency of this dominant wave remains constant with fetch up to equilibrium. This frequency tends to decrease, however, with increasing wind shear on the water. In the second stage of growth, only the energy of wave components with spectral densities lower than the equilibrium limit tend to increase with fetch so that the wave spectrum is maintained near equilibrium in the high-frequency range of the spectrum.The origin of the first waves and the rate of their subsequent growth was examined in the light of possible generating mechanisms. There was no indication that they were produced by direct interaction of the water surface with the air turbulence. Neither could any significant feedback of the waves into the turbulence structure be detected. The growth of the waves was found to be in better agreement with theoretical predictions. Under the shearing action of the wind, the first waves were found to grow exponentially. The growth rates agreed with the estimates from the viscous shearing mechanism of Miles (1962a) to a fractional error of 61% or less. A slight improvement was obtained with the viscous theory of Drake (1967) in which Miles’ model is extended to include the effect of the drift current induced by the wind in the water. Since the magnitude of the water currents observed in the tunnel is very small, this improvement is not significant.