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| Titel |
Were freak waves involved in the sinking of the Tanker "Prestige"? |
| VerfasserIn |
A. Lechuga |
| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| ISSN |
1561-8633
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| Digitales Dokument |
URL |
| Erschienen |
In: Natural Hazards and Earth System Science ; 6, no. 6 ; Nr. 6, no. 6 (2006-11-21), S.973-978 |
| Datensatznummer |
250003808
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 copernicus.org/nhess-6-973-2006.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
This paper deals with the possible involvement of freak, rogue or giant
waves in the damage suffered by the Tanker Prestige, which eventually led to
its sinking. By reason of their very characteristics, giant waves are hard
to record. Their more or less sudden appearance makes them fairly elusive
objects, except for the consequences they produce. However, some hints with
regard to the probability of their occurrence can be derived from
considering how close the maritime weather of the area of interest is to the
situation which is optimal for their generation.
This paper takes into account the wave field in the area and at the time of
the Prestige accident and investigates how near or how far the wave field
was to the instability conditions that are favourable to the generation of
freak waves in the different approximations. This paper explores mostly the
modulation instability which is one of the most common mechanisms to produce
freak waves: it leads to the decomposition of an initially homogeneous train
of Stokes waves firstly into a series of groups of waves, whose envelope
then produces the so-called "solitons", that then collapse in the form of
a giant wave. This mechanism mainly occurs in deep waters. Zakharov studied
it in 1968 and, independently, Benjamin and Feir analysed it in 1967.
This paper proves that the wave field was conspicuously two dimensional with
two main wave components travelling in directions almost orthogonal to each
other. This means that the wave field was well outside the instability
domain. Therefore it is concluded that freak waves were very unlikely
generated and it is improbable that they were responsible for the accident. |
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