Review and Verification of Numerical Wave Models for Near Coastal Areas - Part 2: Verification of Near Coastal Numerical Wave Models

This is a NAVAL RESEARCH LAB STENNIS SPACE CENTER MS COASTAL AND SEMI- ENCLOSED SEAS SECTION report procured by the Pentagon and made available for public release. It has been reproduced in the best form available to the Pentagon. It is not spiral-bound, but rather assembled with Velobinding in a soft, white linen cover. The Storming Media report number is A521933. The abstract provided by the Pentagon follows: This report details the validation of the numerical wave models REF/ DEF1 and REF/DIF-S. The monochromatic model REF/DIF1 is used to test most model physics, while the irregular wave model REF/DIF-S is used to investigate model applicability to realistic situations. Comparisons of the models to available analytical solutions, synthetic cases, and laboratory and field scenarios are performed. Where applicable, we also compare the two models to the wave model RCPWAVE, which is based on a different formulation. We find that the REF/DIF models are reasonably accurate in most of the situations tested. The REF/DIF models also outperform RCPWAVE in most of the instances where the models can be compared. In particular, it is found that the RCPWAVE model under predicts the effect of wave diffraction. Model robustness to bathymetric uncertainty is also tested. It is found that neither REF/DIF1 nor REF/DIF-S is overly sensitive to bathymetric uncertainty. In areas where the diffraction effect is large, the REF/DIF-S model tends to have more robust characteristics than the monochromatic model, due primarily to its irregular nature. Details of the modified spectral input program used in this study appear in the appendix.