The RIDE model: an enhanced computer program for wave transformation

Abstract

A wave transformation model (RIDE) was enhanced to include the process of wave breaking energy dissipation in addition to water wave refraction, diffraction, reflection, shoaling, bottom friction, and harbor resonance. The Gaussian Elimination with partial Pivoting (GEP) method for a banded matrix equation and a newly developed bookkeeping procedure were used to solve the elliptic equation. Because the bookkeeping procedure changes the large computer memory requirements into a large hard-disk-size requirement with a minimum number of disk I/O, the simple and robust GEP method can be used in personal computers to handle realistic applications. The computing time is roughly proportional to N-1.7, where N is the number of grid points in the computing domain. Because the GEP method is capable of solving many wave conditions together (limited by having the same wave period, no bottom friction and no breaking), this model is very efficient compared to iteration methods when simulating some of the wave transformation process. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.