Modeling of ocean-atmosphere interaction phenomena during the breaking of modulated wave trains

Abstract

Air water interaction phenomena taking place during the breaking of ocean waves are investigated here. The study is carried out by exploiting the combination between a potential flow method, which is used to describe the evolution of the wave system up to the onset of the modulational instability, and a two-fluids Navier-Stokes solver which describes the strongly non-linear air-water interaction taking place during breaking events. The potential flow method is based on a fully non-linear mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian approach, whereas the two-fluid model uses a level-set method for the interface capturing. The method is applied to study the evolution of a modulated wave train composed by a funda..