Investigation on mechanisms of fast opposing water waves influencing overlying wind using simulation and theoretical models

Abstract

We use large-eddy simulation (LES) and theoretical analyses to study the turbulent flow over fast opposing water waves. A novel nonlinear viscous model for airflow perturbations induced by Stokes waves is developed, which can account for wave-perturbation viscous stress and the nonlinear forcing by multimode interactions of wave-correlated quantities in the wind field. Overall, the nonlinear viscous model can describe the wave-coherent airflow in the LES results for high-order Stokes waves, which demonstrates the negligible effects of wave-perturbation turbulent stress in the wind. According to the model, the dominant components of the fundamental mode of the airflow perturbation primarily result from the linear response of the wind to the wave and, thus, are not substantially affected by the nonlinear forcing. However, the weak components of the fundamental mode, which produce the form drag on the wave, are created by the combined effects of the nonlinear forcing and the wave-perturbation viscous stress. We found that the main mechanism for generating the nonlinear forcing is the interaction between the second harmonic and the fundamental mode of the wave-correlated quantities in the air. In this mechanism, wave nonlinearity exerts its effects mainly through the second harmonic of the wave surface, instead of the second harmonic of the wave kinematics. Therefore, it is further demonstrated that a second-order Stokes wave is sufficient to capture the wave nonlinearity effects on the form drag.