Determination of wave direction from linear and polygonal arrays

Abstract

Two key issues that have militated against popular adoption of methods based on phase/time/path difference concepts for the determination of wave direction from array measurements are addressed in this paper: the first issue being insufficient documentation of Borgman (1974) in case of linear arrays; and the second issue being the failure of Esteva (1976, 1977) to correctly determine wave directions over the design range 25 to 7 sec of his polygonal array. This paper presents requisite documentation for linear arrays, and shows that Esterva's array can, in fact, be used to advantage over the entire design range. For simulated sinusoidal wave trains, analysis of both linear and polygonal arrays consistently yielded directions accurately, within plus or minus degree in case of polygonal arrays. Results were unaffected when random noise was included for representing ocean waves more realistically