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DATABASES

REFINED WAVE MEASUREMENTS

Welcome to the IAHR Refined Wave Measurements Database which has been set up and is administered by the Maritime Hydraulics Section . This new facility has been instigated to provide scientists with useful information for their reseearch. Each case contains at least a brief description, some data to download, and references to published work. Some cases contain significantly more information than this.
The database is provided as a service to the global maritime hydraulics community.

Prof. Panayotis Prinos, Chairman MHS, November 2005.
Professor of Hydraulic Engineering. Hydraulics Laboratory, Dept. of Civil Eng.
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Thessaloniki, 541 24 GREECE
Tel. +30-2310-995689 / Fax. +30-2310-995672
e-mail prinosp@civil.auth.gr

If you have any comments or suggestions for further improvements, e-mail iahr@iahr.org.





Case 1: Wave propagation over Low Crested Structures (LCS)
(contributed by C. Vidal and I. Losada, University of Santander, losadai@unican.es )

General Description
The experimental data presented here concerns wave interaction with low-crested structures. The laboratory experiments took place in the wave and current flume of the Coastal Laboratory of the University of Cantabria as a part of the research carried out for the European Project DELOS “Environmental DEsign of LOw Crested Coastal Defence Structures”. The following description is extracted from the corresponding DELOS technical report by Vidal et al. (2002)...
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Download test data  (“.zip” files)
Each “.zip” file contains two general information files and several data files. The Excel file “.xls” provides details required to use the data files while the AutoCAD file “.dwg” a sketch of the experimental set-up. The type of the data files (“.dat”) is identified with three letters: SUR: data from free surface gauges, PRE: data from pressure sensors and LDA: data from LDA sensors.

Case 2: Wave overtopping a trapezoidal structure
(contributed by P.K. Stansby, Univ. of Manchester, p.k.stansby@manchester.ac.uk)

General Description
Experiments presented in this section took place in a wave flume and simulated regular waves overtopping an impermeable trapezoidal obstacle placed on a sloping beach. The following description is partially extracted from Stansby and Feng (2004)...
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Download test data  (“.zip” files)
The format of the “.dat” files is as follows:

  • Column 1: time in seconds
  • Columns 2-14: surface elevation in mm at probes 1 to 13.

The three digits (*) of the filename (e.g. overtop_***.dat) denote still water level at the wavemaker in mm.

Case 3: Random wave propagation in shoaling water
(contributed by C. Memos, National Technical University Athens, email: memos@hydro.ntua.gr)

General Description
Experimental tests were conducted at the UK Coastal Research Facility, HR Wallingford, during a period of 12 weeks. The experiments aimed at studying various aspects of random wave propagation in shallow water, such as evolution of the joint H-T density and its correlation with spectra, wave directionality, particle kinematics in the surf zone.
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Download test data
Data for each test case are stored in a zip file (“ T*_Memos.zip ”). For Tests 1 and 2, the zip file of each test includes 7 data files (e.g. “ N8-11_*.asc ”), while for Test 3, 8 data files and for Tests 4 and 5, 3 data files.

Case 4: Wave run-up at a steep beach
(contributed by A. Jensen, G. K. Pedersen, Mechanics Division, Department of Mathematics, University of Oslo, atlej@math.uio.no)

General Description
This report presents file structure of data from selected experiments on run-up of gentle, as well as, strongly nonlinear waves on a beach of 10.540 inclination. Most of the results are presented in Jensen et al. (2003). Velocity fields are obtained by the PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) technique. In addition, free surface profiles are extracted from digital images and resistance probes. The investigation focuses on the dynamics of the early stages of the run-up, when steep fronts evolve in the vicinity of the equilibrium shoreline, but maximum run-up heights are also reported in Jensen et al. (2003).
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Download test data
Data for each test case is stored in a zip file (“Case*.zip”) which includes a single folder named “t$” where $ is a decimal number denoting the trigger time of the PIV measurements in seconds. Each “t$” folder consists of the following subdirectories:

  • [1-5], each of which contains data files from one run (measurement),       
    e.g. velocities in  “xyUV.dat” files and parameters in “param.dat” files.
  • Av, which contains the averaged velocities over all runs,
    e.g.velocities in “xyUV.dat” file and standard deviation in “xystUV.dat” file.

CASE 5: EXTREME WAVE ANALYSIS DATA
(contributed by IAHR Maritime Hydraulics-Working Group on Extreme Wave Analysis, p.hawkes@hrwallingford.co.uk )

General Description
The statistical analysis of extreme wave data is an important tool in the determination of the design wave height for many coastal and offshore structures. The methodology for the statistical analysis of these extreme data is quite diversified depending on the preference of the analysts and there seems to be no consensus as to the most reliable method of extremal data analysis.
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Download test data
The file (Haltnenbanken.txt) consists of five columns: the first one contains the RDS, the second contains the year, month, day, hour and minutes of the measurement, the third the storm index (0. , 1. , 2. , 3.) for ordinary data, local maxima, monthly maxima and yearly maxima respectively, the fourth the significant wave height measurements in meters and the fifth the spectral peak period of the measurements in seconds. The maximum wave height in this data set is 12.51m.
The file (Kodiak.txt) consists of three columns: the first one contains the date of the storm peak, the second the maximum significant wave height (>6m) and the third the period. The maximum wave height in this data set is 11.70m.
The file (samples.txt) consists of 500 uncensored samples indexed by RUN#1 - RUN#500. For each sample the number of simulated data and the threshold used are mentioned. Each sample contains ten columns of data. 
The file (samples_above6point5.txt) consists of 500 censored samples indexed by RUN#1 - RUN#500. For each sample the number of simulated data and the threshold used are mentioned. Each sample contains ten columns of data, but the data in each RUN are limited compared to those in file samples.txt, due to the censoring used. 

CASE 6: MULTIDIRECTIONAL WAVE DATA ANALYSIS
(contributed by IAHR Maritime Hydraulics-Working Group on Multidirectional Waves, p.hawkes@hrwallingford.co.uk )

General Description
An IAHR Working Group produced twelve sets of multidirectional wave data to study multidirectional wave simulation, generation and analysis techniques. All data sets have the same incident wave height, period and direction, but corresponding to diverse and realistic situations in laboratory wave basins. Two different directional spreads are used, as well as two different numerical synthesis methods plus wave basin measurements. Four data sets include reflected or cross-wave components and three data sets incorporate common recording faults.
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Download test data
Each plain text file contains a header, describing the position and type of the signals. The wave propagation direction is given by the angle with the positive x-axis (counter-clockwise). All twelve files consist of eight columns: the first six columns contain the surface elevations of the center and of the five vertices of the pentagon located at 0.5m from its center. The last two contain linear horizontal particle velocities u (column 7) and v (column 8) in the x- and y- directions at the center of the pentagon, but 0.2m below the still water level. The surface elevations (columns 1-6) are in meters and the velocities (columns 7 and 8) are in m/s. All files contain 30000 samples at a sample rate of 20Hz (sample interval 0.05s). The (Fortran) format of each row is 8F9.4.

CASE 7: EXTREME JOINT PROBABILITY ANALYSIS
(Contributed by IAHR Maritime Hydraulics-Working Group on Extreme Joint Probability Analysis, p.hawkes@hrwallingford.co.uk )

General Description
The greatest risk to coastal defense structures tends to occur at times of unusually high water levels combined with large waves. Reliable estimates of the probability of occurrence of such combined conditions are given using joint probability analysis.
Two “blind” data sets were prepared, each representing ten years of records of sea conditions, in which each record consists of a high tide sea level, wave height at high tide and wave period at high tide. Records of significant wave heights (Hs), high tide sea levels (WL) and mean wave periods (Tm) were produced by Monte Carlo simulation from statistical distributions.
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Download test data
Both files consist of three columns: the first one shows the significant wave height Hs in meters, the second one the high tide sea level (WL) in meters above a datum level and the third one the mean wave period (Tm) in seconds.