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Introduction
Estimating nearshore wind-wave growth and transformation is a critical
component of most coastal engineering projects, e.g., predicting bathymetric and
shoreline change, estimating navigation channel shoaling and migration,
designing or repairing coastal structures, assessing navigation conditions, and
evaluating natural evolution of coastal inlets or beaches versus consequences of
engineering actions. Nearshore wave propagation is influenced by complex
bathymetry (including shoals and navigation channels); tide-, wind-, and wave-
generated currents; tide- and surge-induced water level variation; and coastal
structures. Use of numerical wave models has become widespread to represent
wave transformation primarily because of their increasing sophistication and
economy of application relative to the large expense of field measurements or
physical model studies.
This report describes version 3.0 of the steady-state spectral wave model,
STWAVE. The purpose of STWAVE is to provide an easy-to-apply, flexible,
and robust model for nearshore wind-wave growth and propagation. Upgrades to
the model since the release of version 2.0 (Smith, Resio, and Zundel 1999)
include:
calculate wave-driven currents and water level changes in a circulation
model. This feature has been used to link with the Advanced 3-D
Circulation model (ADCIRC) (e.g., Militello et al. 2000; Smith and
Ebersole 2000)
b. Increased model efficiency of 25 to 40 percent compared to STWAVE
version 2.0. The greatest speedup is for cases that include wave-current
interaction.
c. Addition of an input current option ICUR = 2 to read a single current field
for multiple input spectra.
d. Addition of an output file designating grid cells where wave breaking
occurs.
e. Revised format of the spectral output file. This modification eliminates
an error in free format reads for spectra with high energy levels.
f. Revised calculation of wave parameters on the offshore boundary that
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Chapter 1 Introduction
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