WAVE GROUPING EFFECT IN IRREGULAR WAVE AGITATION IN HARBORS

Hydraulic model tests were conducted on two different natural harbors to study the influence of diffraction and reflection of irregular waves compared to regular waves. Two types of reflective walls within one harbor were also tested. Irregular wave trains with different peak frequencies and groupiness factors were generated. These tests have shown that within the limits of the frequency band of the spectral energy density, irregular wave diffraction‐reflection coefficients show less variability and appear to give better information than do the ones obtained from regular wave tests. Outside the frequency range containing most of the energy of the incident wave train, high values of the transfer function were observed in the lower and upper frequency range. However, their energy content was relatively small, and the long wave energy attached to wave grouping could not be attributed to harbor resonance. In the high frequency range, the presence of noise is attributed to the high transfer function estimates.