Lagrangian moments and mass transport in Stokes waves

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Abstract
The orbital motions in surface gravity waves are of interest for analysing wave records made by accelerometer buoys. In this paper we derive some exact expressions for the first, second and third cumulants of the vertical orbital displacements in a regular Stokes wave of finite amplitude in terms of previously known integral quantities of the wave: the kinetic and potential energies, the phase speed c and the mass-transport velocity U at the free surface. These results generalize a remarkably simple relation found previously between the Lagrangian-mean surface level and the product Uc.Expansions are given in powers of the wave steepness parameter ak which show that the third Lagrangian cumulant is very small – of order (ak)6, indicating a high degree of vertical symmetry in the orbit. This contrasts with the situation in random waves, where the third cumulant is of order (ak)4 only. It is shown that the increased skewness in random waves is due mainly to an O(ak)2 shift in the Lagrangian mean level of individual waves. Such shifts in mean level may be too gradual to be fully detected by some accelerometer buoys. In that case the apparent skewness will be reduced.

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