Clapotis
Non-breaking standing wave pattern / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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In hydrodynamics, a clapotis (from French for "lapping of water") is a non-breaking standing wave pattern, caused for example, by the reflection of a traveling surface wave train from a near vertical shoreline like a breakwater, seawall or steep cliff.[1][2][3][4] The resulting clapotic wave does not travel horizontally, but has a fixed pattern of nodes and antinodes.[5][6] These waves promote erosion at the toe of the wall,[7] and can cause severe damage to shore structures.[8] The term was coined in 1877 by French mathematician and physicist Joseph Valentin Boussinesq who called these waves 'le clapotis' meaning "the lapping".[9][10]
In the idealized case of "full clapotis" where a purely monotonic incoming wave is completely reflected normal to a solid vertical wall,[11][12] the standing wave height is twice the height of the incoming waves at a distance of one half wavelength from the wall.[13] In this case, the circular orbits of the water particles in the deep-water wave are converted to purely linear motion, with vertical velocities at the antinodes, and horizontal velocities at the nodes. [14] The standing waves alternately rise and fall in a mirror image pattern, as kinetic energy is converted to potential energy, and vice versa.[15] In his 1907 text, Naval Architecture, Cecil Peabody described this phenomenon:
At any instant the profile of the water surface is like that of a trochoidal wave, but the profile instead of appearing to run to the right or left, will grow from a horizontal surface, attain a maximum development, and then flatten out till the surface is again horizontal; immediately another wave profile will form with its crests where the hollows formerly were, will grow and flatten out, etc. If attention is concentrated on a certain crest, it will be seen to grow to its greatest height, die away, and be succeeded in the same place by a hollow, and the interval of time between the successive formations of crests at a given place will be the same as the time of one of the component waves.[16]