Directional spectrum of wind waves: Part I—model and derivation

Abstract

A new model on the directional spectrum of wind waves for deep water is proposed based on the statistics of wind waves. This model contains three parameters: the wave age, the inverse spectral bandwidth and the local spectral-peak angular frequency. The inverse spectral bandwidth is a robust parameter for describing the spectral steepness of wind waves. Using the inverse spectral bandwidth parameter, the proposed model can well describe various observations obtained from the open ocean and laboratory tank.