A plea for Miles' approach to wind-wave interaction
Abstract
Although the phenomenon of wave growth under the effect of wind still holds many open questions, the approach initiated by Miles [1] is a cornerstone of the current comprehension. This theory is based on physical arguments, keeping phenomenological input to a minimum, but it can be perceived as intimidating, especially in view of concrete applications. Here we argue that Miles' results can be summarised in terms of a simple functional form, which provides an easy-to-use expression to work with. We furthermore show that Miles' predictions do not, as is often stated, underestimate growth rates, once the presence of a whole wave spectrum is accounted for. Finally, we illustrate that the generalisation of Miles' original result to complex hydrodynamic situations can be quite straightforward. Our hands-on summary should make it heretofore very easy to exploit Miles' approach in practice.
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BibTeX
@misc{kern2026plea,
title = {{A plea for Miles' approach to wind-wave interaction}},
author = {Norbert Kern and Miguel M. Manna and Frédéric Bouchette and Christophe Chaubet},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.06317},
eprint = {2611.06317},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.06317},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - A plea for Miles' approach to wind-wave interaction
AU - Norbert Kern
AU - Miguel M. Manna
AU - Frédéric Bouchette
AU - Christophe Chaubet
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/04
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.06317
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.06317
AB - Although the phenomenon of wave growth under the effect of wind still holds many open questions, the approach initiated by Miles [1] is a cornerstone of the current comprehension. This theory is based on physical arguments, keeping phenomenological input to a minimum, but it can be perceived as intimidating, especially in view of concrete applications. Here we argue that Miles' results can be summarised in terms of a simple functional form, which provides an easy-to-use expression to work with. We furthermore show that Miles' predictions do not, as is often stated, underestimate growth rates, once the presence of a whole wave spectrum is accounted for. Finally, we illustrate that the generalisation of Miles' original result to complex hydrodynamic situations can be quite straightforward. Our hands-on summary should make it heretofore very easy to exploit Miles' approach in practice.
ER -