Proceedings ProceedingsofofOMAE’01 OMAE'01: th 20 International Conference on Offshore Mechanics Engineering 20 th International Conference on Offshore Mechanics and and Artic Arctic Engineering Rio de Janeiro, June 3-8, 2001 June 3-8, 2001,Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil OMAE2001/S&R-2178 OMAE'01-S&R-2178 PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTIONS OF WAVE HEIGHTS AND PERIODS IN MEASURED TwO-PEAKED SPECTRA FROM THE PORTUGUESE COAST C. Guedes Soares, A. N. Carvalho Unit of Marine Technology and Engineering, Technical University of Lisbon Instituto Superior T~cnico, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal Email: [email protected], utl.pt Therefore, it is very useful to assess the ability of the present probabilistic models to model full-scale data so as to verify the adequacy of the conclusions obtained previously on the basis of numerically simulated data. ABSTRACT An analysis is made of measured two-peaked sea spectra from a deep-water location at the Portuguese Coast. The spectra are organised in different groups according to the relative nature of their two component wave systems. The probability distributions of wave height and period are determined and compared with several theoretical models. This paper deals with the analysis of buoy data measured by a directional waverider buoy at a location of the Portuguese coast. From the data of one year, the two-peaked spectra have been identified and have been classified into 9 classes, according to the relative value of the energy and peak frequency of each of the two wave systems. The results of firing various probabilistic models to the data in each class are reported here. INTRODUCTION Most work on developing probabilistic models of short-term sea state characteristics has concentrated on wind waves in single wave systems, which are appropriately described by single peaked spectra. However, the importance of combined sea states of sea and swell (Guedes Soares, 1984) is becoming generally recognized and thus the interest of verifying whether the available probabilistic models are applicable in these situations. E X P E R I M E N T A L DATA The experimental data used in this study has been collected by a Datawell waverider buoy located off the port of Sines in Portugal. The buoy is located at a water depth of 97 m. There has been a series of studies by Rodriguez and Guedes Soares, which were based on numerical simulations of twopeaked spectra and considered the marginal distributions of wave height (Rodriguez et. al, 1999) and wave period (Rodriguez and Guedes Soares, 2000), joint distribution of height and period (Rodriguez and Guedes Soares, 1999), as well as the group structure (Rodriguez et. al., 2000) in these sea states. The main conclusions were that for some of the combined sea states the probabilistic models developed for single wave systems were still applicable. However, for the sea states with larger differences in the peak period of the two wave systems some discrepancies were identified. The measured time series have 30 minutes duration and the scalar spectra have been determined by usual spectral analysis procedures. The sea surface elevation was sampled at a rate of 0.64 Hz during 30 minutes every three hours. The spectral estimators were obtained using the Welch method with cosene window and 25% overlap. Records consisting of 2304 data points were segmented in 18 partitions of 128 points. The wave data used in this study has been collected during the year 2000 and corresponds to a total of 2272 spectra. The whole data set was scrutinized to identify the existence of two peaked spectra, which were identified according to the criteria described in Guedes Soares and Nolasco (1992). From these, 149 spectra were identified as being two peaked, which corresponds to about 7%, a percentage that is lower that the ones reported in Guedes Soares (1991) and in Guedes Soares and Nolasco (1992). Their distribution as a function of Hs is given in Table 1. The limitation that could be attributed to those studies is that they were based on numerical simulations and while that type of simulations are well established for single peaked spectra, it is not clear how the interaction between the two wave systems is being properly taken into account in those numerical simulations. 1 Copyright ©2001 by ASME 0<Hs<1 1<Hs<2 2<Hs<3 3<Hs<4 4<Hs<5 5<Hs<6 6<Hs<7 7<Hs<8 TOTAL Table All spectra 96 1121 812 129 54 47 7 6 2272 Soares (1984), in which the other two parameters are the significant wave height and the mean period o f the sea state. 2 peaks 31 70 3l 5 5 7 0 0 149 However, recently Henriques and Guedes Soares (1998) have concluded that using peak period instead o f the mean period improved the quality o f the fit. Sea state category - Distribution of the number of spectra with Hs a) b) c) Swell-Dominated Sea States. The main part o f the wave field energy is associated with the low-frequency spectral peak, but significantly influenced by wind-sea. One o f these is the ratio o f energies associated to each wave system, or Sea-Swell Energy Ratio (SSER), defined as the ratio o f the wind-sea frequency band zero order spectral moment to the zero order moment o f the frequency spectrum corresponding to the swell wave field (2) 0 and the subscripts sw and ws stand for swell and wind-sea parameters, respectively. Those wave fields with SSER value smaller than one represent swell dominated sea states and those with SSRE value greater than one correspond to the wind-sea dominated category. If the SSRE value is close to one they are included in the category o f sea states with two spectral peaks with comparable energy content. 0.202 0.473 2 0.319 0.575 17 III 0.518 0.573 4 Wind-sea I 0.192 5.033 6 Dominated II III 0.321 6.434 0.485 5.745 8 2 state Mixed wind-sea I 0.165 1.852 2 and swell systemsof II 0.328 1.595 9 Comparable energy Ill 0.514 1.552 3 The identified two-peak spectra have been grouped into nine categories, in terms o f the two dimensionless parameters. These three categories have been denoted by the letters a, b and c, respectively, as indicated in column 1 o f Table 2. The other parameter is the frequency separation between the spectral frequency peaks, f p , corresponding to the swell and wind-wave systems, named as Inter-modal Distance (ID) and expressed as p.. - f p ~ fp. + f p . I II Thus, the combination o f the above described characteristics o f wave fields in terms o f ID and SSER, leads to nine classes o f sea states which are representative o f a wide part o f the bimodal spectra that can be observed at sea. After identifying the two-peaked spectra and classifying them in the mentioned nine classes, they have been normalized and then all data was pooled in order to obtain the mean spectra shown in figure 1. The frequency was normalized by the peak frequency o f the individual spectral component with highest energy. The spectral ordinates were normalized by the largest value. The spectra o f these nine kinds o f sea states are shown in figure 1 and the corresponding values o f ID and SSER are given in table 2. where m. is the n th order spectral moment, given by IO= spectra Those wave fields with ID value close to zero correspond to sea states with swell and wind-sea spectral peaks very near to each other. Those with ID value nearer to one represent sea states with swell and wind-sea systems located in very different frequency zones, that is to say, the swell and windsea spectral peaks are considerably separated. Finally, those wave fields with intermediate values o f l D are included in the group o f two-peaked sea states whose modal spectral frequencies are moderately separated. These three groups are denoted by I, II and III, as indicated in column 2 o f Table 2. These three categories o f sea states can be characterized by means o f two a nondimensional parameters. " n = 0, 1, 2,... Nr. o f Table 2: Shape parameters of the two-peaked spectra, mean spectral bandwidth values and number of spectra of the wave records in each spectrum type. Sea States with Comparable Influence o f Wind-Sea and Swell. The wave field energy is comparably distributed over the low and high frequency ranges. m,, = I f " S O C ) d f SSER Swell sea state Wind-Sea-Dominated Sea States. The most important part of the energy is concentrated on the high-frequency spectral part, but with a significant contribution from low-frequency components. 11) Dominated sea Sea states with two peak spectra can be classified in the following main categories: Sea state group Initially only the spectra with H s >__2m were chosen for the present study. This led to a total o f 48 spectra but classes IIIb and IIIc did not have any spectra. Therefore, in order to have all classes represented, 5 additional spectra were chosen with H s < 2m leading to a total o f 53 spectra distributed as indicated in Table 2. (3) It should be noted that ID and SSER are closely related to two o f the four parameters used in the model o f Guedes 2 Copyright ©2001 by ASME [ [- m 1 1 olI I 0. laIa 0. 8 0. 6 Lo.6 i 00 .. 6 6 I ~08 I iIo.4 0. 4 8 I i I II a Ila 0. 8 '0.8 0. 6 i0.6 0. 4 0 i I I 0 0 - 0 1 -- , , 2 7 3 3 4 5 4 L 1 2 2 o 3 fOi 3 0 4 4 5 5 00 Ib 0. 8 0. 8 Ib o A 0. 6 0. 4 0. 4 0.4 0. 2 0. 2 i0"20 0 0 0 0 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 5 4 5 I 0 . , 0 0 I . 1 i . 2 2 1 Ic Ic 3 3 4 4 0 i o 5 0 0 1, 0. 4 0.4 0. 4 i6.4 0. 2 0. 2 0.2 . 2 3 3 4 4 5 3 3 2 4 , 4 5 51 0. 6 0. 2 o.~ i 0 0 0 1 2 IIIc 0. 4 0 1 io.8 !06 i 0 1 0. 8 0. 6 0.6 !i 55 1 II c 0. 8 0.8 0. 6 4 4 0. 2 0.2 1 1 1 0. 8 . 33 IIIb 0. 6 0.6 0. 4 22 0. 8 IIII bb 06 0. 6 1 1 1 08 I I 0. 2 16.2 ----..._._., 0 1 - 1o.4 °ii 0.2 IIIa Ilia 0. 4 0. 2 0. 2 1 0 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 o0 I 1 2 2 33 44 5 5 Figure 1: Shape of the normalized mean spectra in each class iF erug :1 S epah fo t h e ron m a l i z de m nae s p e c t r a i n ae c h c l s a =~ H (5) WAVE H E I G H T D I S T R I B U T I O N M O D E L S VariousHEIGHT theoretical and empirical models have been proposed WAVE DISTRIBUTION MODELS to characterize the wave height probability distribution. The Various theoretical empirical have been more relevant modelsand dealing with models zero-crossing waveproposed heights were discussed in et.al., 1999) anddistribution. their usefulness to characterize the(Rodriguez wave height probability The to predict the wave height distribution in mixed sea states was more relevant models dealing with zero-crossing wave heights examined. Only the most relevant ones will be considered here. were discussed in (Rodriguez et.al., 1999) and their usefulness Longuet-Higgins (1952) established that in a stationary, to predictand the extremely wave height distribution in mixedtheseawave states was gaussian narrow banded process height may be regarded as twice the envelope amplitude and that these examined. Only the most relevant ones will be considered here. are distributed according a Rayleigh probability distribution Longuet-Higgins (1952) established that in a stationary, given by gaussian and extremely narrow banded process the wave height may be regarded as twice the envelope amplitude and that these are distributed according a Rayleigh probability distribution P(~ by > ~ o) = exp given (4) where wave heights were normalized as: The spectral bandwidth of the process is defined in terms of the parameter v =(non2 _ 111/2 ~, m2 (6) However, even for a narrow band process (v ~ 0) the assumption of the wave height as twice the amplitude of the envelope amplitude is not totally exact due to the modulated structure of a narrow band process and the time lag between a crest and the adjacent trough. Various authors have suggested that wave heights fits more adequately to other probability laws, such as the Weibull distribution, which for the normalized wave height may be written as / (7) where (~ and 13 are parameters to be determined by using some 3 Copyright 02001 by ASME 4 Copyright 2001 by ASME Naess (1985) derived an expression for the crest-to-trough wave heigh in a stationary Gaussian narrow banded wave train given by: procedure for fitting empirical data. Forristall (1978) used data recorded during hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and obtained a good agreement between the Weibull distribution and the observed data for (~=2.126 and 13=8.42. In a latter paper Longuet-Higgins (1980) showed that the data examined by Forristal (1978) could be adequately fitted by introducing the finite spectral bandwidth effect in the relationship between the amplitude mean root square and mo. In this way, the exceedance probability distribution takes the form P(~ > ~o) = exp - 734v 2 - 4(1_ p ~(~9}) P(~ >~o) =exp (9) where p(x/2) represents the value of the normalized autocorrelation function of the sea surface elevation at the time when it attains its first minimum: (8) R(O) This distribution improves the predictions given by equation (8). Ila la o Ilia ~4 f e. ft. """ "",,, ~ ,,x, ", i°I ,g • ", "",'x. lo ~ m lib Ib ~1~ • 2 ° IIIb '%i -\ i>1 I 2 3 ~ $ 7 S 10", S i i ; 1 ; ; ff 5 10' 1 2 lie IIIc "-. 4 3 5 i 7 Ic . - Nt~s " >x 1 e i lO' 11 3 * S ~10' o X\N'" ~ 2 3 '~ 5 S I~ r tO ~10, ]! 1 2 3 4 5 Figure 2: Empirical and Theoretical Distribution of Wave Height in Different Spectral Groups. 4 Copyright @2001 by A S M E S distributions. Increasing ID an overprediction of the Rayleigh distribution and an improvement of the fit for the Weibull distribution are observed. It is possible to see that there is an underestimation of the Naess model in all cases. When ID takes large values the Weibull distribution is able to predict the observations over the main part of wave heights. Results and Discussion The models described in the previous section have been applied to the nine mean spectra and Table 3 shows the value of these parameters. It is also shown the mean value of the spectral bandwidth parameters e and v, corresponding to each group of the kind of sea state considered. It should be noted that the spectral bandwidth increases with the inter-modal distance but there is not a direct relationship between both parameters. Sea-Swell energy equivalent sea states For small and large ID values there is an overprediction of all models for higher height waves (~>5). It is for intermediate ID values that the best fitting is found for all range of wave heights. In this case the Weibull distribution gives good results, while the Rayleigh and Naess models produce overprediction and underestimation, respectively. Once again a similar behaviour is observed for Rayleigh and Weibull for small inter modal distance. The mean values of p corresponding to each group of wave spectra records for each kind of sea state are given in table 3. Note that in the limit, when the spectral bandwidth approaches zero this distribution converges to a Rayleigh distribution. Sea state category ~ Sea state group Swell o p ¢t [1 I 0.869 0.620 -0.627 1.849 5.714 II 0.848 0.815 -0.405 1.960 6.877 sea state III 0.823 0.701 -0.492 2.043 7.328 Wind-sea I 0.787 0.453 -0.856 2.032 7.519 Dominated Dominated A B seastate Mixedwind-sea And swell systems with C Comparable energy II 0.780 0.490 -0.489 2.007 7.449 III 0.700 0.450 -0.439 2.149 8.899 I 0.823 0.559 -0.608 2.058 7.581 I1 0.785 0.540 -0.397 2.181 8.886 III 0.730 0.580 -0.438 2.272 8.714 WAVE PERIOD DISTRIBUTION MODELS The study of the probability density function of wave periods has received less attention than that of wave heights. This is due to the intrinsic difficulty to determine the distributions for wave periods, even under the assumptions that waves are linear and have narrow-band frequency spectrum. A common procedure to obtain the probability density of wave periods has been to derive it as a marginal distribution from the joint distribution of wave heights and periods. The earlier method was presented by Longuet-Higgins (1975), based on the assumption of a narrow banded spectral density function. The expression of the marginal distribution of wave periods given by this author is Table 3: Parameters of the fitted distribution of wave height. In addition to applying the models to the complete data set corresponding to the normalized mean spectra, they have also been applied to each individual sea state and it was observed that despite some variability, there was the same trend as the one of the mean spectra. Swell dominated sea states V 2 It can be observed that the case (Ia) is the only one in which the three distributions produce an adequate fit to the main range of wave heights, but not for the highest value which are overpredicted. It can also be observed that in this case the Rayleigh distribution gives the best fit to the empirical probability while the Weibull distribution shows a small deviation which increases with wave height. With the increase of ID, the best and worse fittings are the Naess model, for the highest heights values (~>6) and the rest of the range, respectively. In contrast, the Rayleigh and Weibull distribution gives the opposite behaviour. In all cases it is possible to see an overprediction of the observed probabilities of the Naess model, especially for intermediate and large values of ID, where this deviation is significant. Another observation, in these cases, is the similar behaviour of the Rayleigh and Weibull distributions. (11) where the wave periods were normalized as: x- Tm~ (12) m o Another theoretical expression for the wave period distribution was derived by Cavanie et al. (1976). These authors used the wave crest distribution to derive the joint distribution of wave heights and periods as a starting point. The theoretical marginal distribution of wave periods given by them takes the form 0t 3 [32x p(x ) = 2 _(/2 (13) .~_Ot 4 [~ 2 Wind-sea dominated sea states When the SSER is large and ID is small none of the models is able to characterise the observed probabilities over the entire range of wave heights, in particular for the highest value which is underestimated. For small and intermediate values of ID there is a very similar behaviour of the Rayleigh and Weibull 5 where oc=l/~2II+ 1-x/~-S-e2); 13=/~l_eZ (14) and Copyright ©2001 by ASME = upcrossing period, which implies no correlation between individual wave heights and periods. However, the joint distribution of wave heights and periods of wave records with finite bandwidth displays a clear asymmetry about this period, mainly for low heights. To remove this inconsistency LonguetHiggins (1983) revised his model and presented an alternative approach, from which the marginal distribution of wave periods adopts the following expression (15) mom4 J is a spectral bandwidth parameter. It should be noted that the dimensionless period is given by "~ = ~'r = ~ Tin, (16) mo where ~- is a function of e that remains close to 1 one for values P(x)=t. of g from 0 to 0.95. Then, ~- = 1 is used here. It should be noted that the model proposed by LonguetHiggins (1975) shows symmetry of periods about the mean zero la ,) ,,=j 4 (17) which, according to Shum and Melville (1984), seems to give good results. Ib le 14 r ~L ! ",\ / "\ 'l i ?' o6~ /:' O4 ~i \ 1 ~2 {Y • s o F , o~ x i lib Ila IIc ~~ 14. ... L~..,.J l 12 /,,\ I /,<~ ~ 1 o o5 ~ I ':\,I ~ !i 1-7 ~ / i, i tx- - -o 2S 05 1 is 2 25 x IIIb Ilia IIIc ~ f, -!! ! I, ,r o~ % ,1 i - :: ..... ms o o~ 1 Is 2 i 2s I 3 1~ 2 22 .... 3 Figure 3: Empirical and Theoretical Distribution of W a v e Period in Different Spectral Groups. 6 Copyright ©2001 by ASME Results and Discussion mixed sea states IIc, IIIc and Illb. However, in the last two cases the models give rise to a systematic overestimation around the mean period. The largest deviations are when the observed probabilities tend to bimodal, like in the cases Ia, Ilia and Ib, where none of the models can be fit. The general trend of the results of of the same nature as the obtained earlier with numerically simulated data. Figure 3 shows the histogram of the normalised period data in all classes. Also shown are the probability density function resulting from fitting the distribution of Longett-Higgins and of Cavani6 et al to the data. Swell dominated sea states In the swell dominated case, especially for small and large intermodal distance, the distribution tends to bimodal. For intermediate intermodal distance the shape of the distribution is close to symmetric. This is due the increase of intermediate periods while for small and large intermodal distance the number of small and large periods increases. Except for intermediate intermodal distance where there is a slight deviation, none of the models are able to characterise the empirical distribution of wave periods. It can be observed that both theoretical models underestimate the probability of intermediate periods and overestimate the probabilities of small and long wave periods. Acknowledgements The data analyzed in the present paper was supplied by the Port of Sines within the scope of the project "Radar Monitoring Network of the Sea State in the Coastal Waters of the Iberian Peninsula" (RADSEANET). The analysis was made within the scope of the project "Reliability Based Structural Design of FPSO Systems" (REBASDO), which is partially funded by the European Commission under the contact ENK6-2000-00107). The authors are grateful to Dr. Z. Cherneva for several helpful discussions. Wind-sea dominated sea states For wind-sea dominated spectra the shape of distribution is more regular and the models are able to characterise the wave period distribution for intermediate and large intermodal distance. The two models are very similar, with a small deviation for small and large wave periods. REFERENCES Cavani6, A., Arhan, M. and Ezraty, R., 1976, "A Statistical Relationship between Individual Heights and Periods of Storm Waves", Proc. Conf. on Behaviour of Offshore Structures, Vol. 2, pp. 354-360. Forristall, G. Z., 1978, "On the Statistical Distribution of Wave Heights in a Storm", J. Geophys. Res., 83:2553-2558 Sea-Swell energy equivalent sea states When the energy is comparable the shape of the distribution is close to symmetric, except for the case of small intermodal distance, which tends to bimodal. Thus, the models are able to predict the distribution of wave periods except for the last case. However, there is an overestimation of both models around the mean period. Guedes Soares, C., 1984, "Representation of double-peaked sea wave spectra", Ocean Engineering, Vol. 11, pp. 185-207. Guedes Soares, C., 1991, "On the Occurrence of Double Peaked Wave Spectra", Ocean Engineering, Vol. 18, N ° 1/2, pp. 167-171 Guedes Soares, C. and Nolasco, M.C., 1992 "Spectral Modelling of Sea States with Multiple Wave Systems", Journal of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Eng., Vol.l14, pp.278-284. Henriques, A. C. and Guedes Soares, C., 1998, "Fitting a double-peak spectral model to measured wave spectra", Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering, C. Guedes Soares (Eds.), ASME, New York, Vol. II. Longuet-Higgins, M.S., 1975, "On the Joint Distribution of Wave Periods and Amplitudes of Sea Waves", J. Geophys. Res., Vol. 80, pp. 2688-2694. Longuet-Higgins, M. S., 1980, "On the Distribution of Heights of Sea Waves: Some Effects of Nonlinearity and Finite Bandwidth", J. Geophysical Research, 85(C3): 15191523. Longuet-Higgins, M.S., 1983, "On the Joint Distribution of Wave Periods and Amplitudes in a Random Wave Field", Proc. Roy. Soc. of London, Vol., 389(A), pp. 241-258. CONCLUSIONS In relation to the relative usefulness of the different models to predict the observed exceedance probability, the Rayleigh distribution gives rise to a systematic overprediction of the observed wave heights. This model is able to reproduce the observed probability only in the case of swell dominated sea states with low intermodal distance. In the cases of wind-sea dominated sea states with large intermodal distance and bimodal sea state with similar energy and intermodal distance not too large, the best overall fits between observed and predicted probabilities is given by Weibull distribution. The Naess model only gives good results for higher waves heights in swell dominated sea states with intermediate and large intermodal distance. The theoretical models, when compared with the observed probabilities seem to be useful to predict the obtained wave period distribution, at least approximately, only in the cases of 7 Copyright ©2001 by ASME Naess, A., 1985, "On the Statistical Distribution of Crest to Trough Wave Heights", Ocean Engineering, 12:221-234 Rodriguez G. R. and Guedes Soares, C., 1999, "The Bivariate Distribution of Wave Height and Periods in Mixed Sea States", J. Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering, 121(2), pp. 102-108. Rodriguez G. and Guedes Soares C., 2000, "Wave Period Distribution in Mixed Sea States", Proceedings of the 19 'h Int. Conf. on Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering, ASME, New York, paper OMAE2000/S&R- 6132 Rodriguez G. R., Guedes Soares, C., Pacheco, M. and Perez, E., 1999, "Wave Heights Distribution in Mixed Sea States", Proc. 18 th Int. Conf. Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Eng., paper OMAE99/S&R-6035. Rodriguez, G. R., Guedes Soares, C. and Ferrer, L., 2000, "Wave Group Statistics of Numerically Simulated Mixed Sea States", J. of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering, Vol. 122, pp.282-288. Shum, K. T. and Melville, W. K., 1984, "Estimates of the Joint Statistic of Amplitudes and Periods of Ocean Waves Using an Integral Transform Technique", J. Geophysical Research, Vol. 89(C4), pp. 6467-6476. 8 Copyright ©2001 by ASME
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