An experimental study of the surface elevation probability distribution

摘要

Due to nonlinear effect, the surface elevation distribution is non-Gaussian. Longuet-Riggins (1963) derived theoretically the non-Gaussian distribution in Gram-Charlier series, Huang and Long (1980) checked the series by laboratory experiments and stated that the series is in good agreement with the observed data when the series is truncated at the term of λ{sub}4 and becomes worse as the truncated term increases to λ{sub}6, and even still worse when the truncated term further increases to λ{sub}8. In order to check Huang and Long's conclusion experiments are conducted in our laboratory. In the experiments the phenomena observed by Huang and Long does not appear and the Gram-Charlier series agrees better and better with the observed data as the truncated term increases.