The new distributions of the statistics of wave groups based on the maximum entropy principle are presented. The maximum entropy distributions appear to be superior to conventional distributions when applied to a limited amount of information. Its applications to the wave group properties show the effectiveness of the maximum entropy distribution. FFF filtering method is employed to obtain the wave envelope fast and efficiently. Comparisons of both the maximum entropy distribution and the distribution of Longuet-Higgins （1984） with the laboratory wind-wave data show that the former gives a better fit.
The wave crest is an important factor for the design of both fixed and floating marine structures.Wave crest height is a dominant parameter in assessing the likelihood of wave-in-deck impact and resultant severe damage.Many empirical and theoretical distribution functions for wave crest heights have been proposed,but there is a lack of agreement between them.It is of significance to develop a better new nonlinear wave crest height distribution model.The progress in the research of wave crest heights is reviewed in this paper.Based on Stokes' wave theory,an approximate nonlinear wave crest-height distribution formula with simple parameters is derived.Two sets of measured data are presented and compared with various theoretical distributions of wave crests obtained from nonlinear wave models and analysis of the comparison is given in detail.The new crest-height distribution model agrees well with observations.Also,the new theoretical distribution is more accurate than the other methods cited in this paper and has a greater range of applications.
Significant wave height is an important criterion in designing coastal and offshore structures.Based on the orthogonality principle, the linear mean square estimation method is applied to calculate significant wave height in this paper.Twenty-eight-year time series of wave data collected from three ocean buoys near San Francisco along the California coast are analyzed.It is proved theoretically that the computation error will be reduced by using as many measured data as possible for the calculation of significant wave height.Measured significant wave height at one buoy location is compared with the calculated value based on the data from two other adjacent buoys.The results indicate that the linear mean square estimation method can be well applied to the calculation and prediction of significant wave height in coastal regions.
