High order Hamiltonian water wave models with wave-breaking mechanism

• Derivation of bi-directional higher order Hamiltonian equations.
• Eddy viscosity wave-breaking model extended for fully dispersive equations.
• An alternative viscosity model with energy decay based on tangential velocity.
• Kinematic criterion used as breaking trigger mechanism.
• Validation with measured data of wave breaking in deep and shallow water.

Based on the Hamiltonian formulation of water waves, using Hamiltonian consistent modelling methods, we derive higher order Hamiltonian equations by Taylor expansions of the potential and the vertical velocity around the still water level. The polynomial expansion in wave height is mixed with pseudo-differential operators that preserve the exact dispersion relation. The consistent approximate equations have inherited the Hamiltonian structure and give exact conservation of the approximate energy. In order to deal with breaking waves, we extend the eddy-viscosity model of Kennedy et al. (2000) to be applicable for fully dispersive equations. As breaking trigger mechanism we use a kinematic criterion based on the quotient of horizontal fluid velocity at the crest and the crest speed. The performance is illustrated by comparing simulations with experimental data for an irregular breaking wave with a peak period of 12 s above deep water and for a bathymetry induced periodic wave plunging breaker over a trapezoidal bar. The comparisons show that the higher order models perform quite well; the extension with the breaking wave mechanism improves the simulations significantly.