Laboratory observations of triad interaction of deep water wind waves

The triad interactions have been known to be important only for shoaling waves or finite depth wind waves. In deep water, they are insignificant compared with the quadruplet interactions in respect to the evolution of wind waves due to energy transfer among the wave components. However, the triad interactions may be important even for deep water waves because they may closely be related to the wave steepness, which definitely affects wave breaking, drag of air flow over the sea, or navigation of ships, especially during the early stage of the development of wind waves. This study reports a series of laboratory experiments, whose data are subjected to bispectral analyses to investigate the triad interactions of deep-water wind waves. It is found that the bicoherence at the spectral peak frequency and the wave steepness are almost directly proportional, indicating that the steep waves with peaked crests and flat troughs are resulted from the triad interactions. Both bicoherence and wave steepness increase with the wave age during the early stage of wave generation and then drop off as the waves grow old. It seems that the energy of the secondary spectral peak developed by the triad interactions during the early stage of wave generation is redistributed to the neighboring frequencies by the quadruplet interactions during the later stage.