The Growth of Wind Waves Estimated Using a New Irrotational Finite Amplitude Water Wave Model

A new deep water irrotational water surface wave model based on the stream function expression for a vortex sheet is presented. If it is assumed that there are waves in the air above the sea surface that correspond to the water surface waves then an expression for the growth of the water waves due to the wind is proposed in terms of a Reynolds number R = U* √LF/Γ, where U* is the friction velocity, L is the wavelength, F is the fetch and Γ is the circulation per wave. The proposed model is compared favourably with the Shore Protection Manual (1984) methods.