Verification of a 3rd Generation FEM Spectral Wave Model for Shallow and Deep Water Applications

This paper shows some results of the work currently carried out to improve the wave forecasting and hindcasting in oceanic and coastal regions. A new spectral wave model with a flexible numerical scheme using triangular elements to describe the model domain was developed by Hsu et al. (2002). This new spectral wave model called WWM (Wind Wave Model) is feasible for the spectral wave modeling of irregular coastlines and complicated bathymetries because of its numerical scheme. The Wave Action Equation is solved with the aid of the Fractional Step Method (Yanenko, 1971). The Integration in the spatial space is carried out with the Taylor-Galerkin Method and the terms describing depth and current induced refraction are integrated with the aid of Leonard’s (1979) TVD Ultimate Quickest scheme, which was already introduced in the WWIII (H. Tolman, 1991) for the same purpose. In three applications the wave model was verified against in-situ spectral measurements of directional and non-directional wave buoys. The results show that the new spectral wave model is capable of hindcasting the wave climate with a comparable accuracy like the SWAN model (Ris et al., 1998), though with a better efficiency since fewer nodes are necessary to resolve the model domain and the boundary conditions adequately.