Transfer and dissipation of energy during wave group propagation on a gentle beach slope

The propagation of bichromatic wave groups over a constant 1:100 beach slope and the influence of the group modulation is presented. The modulation is controlled by varying the group frequency, f g , which is shown to remarkably affect the energy transfer to high and low frequency components. The growth of the high frequency (hf) wave skewness increases when f g decreases. This is explained by nonlinear coupling between the primary frequencies, which results in a larger growth of hf components as f g decreases, causing the hf waves to break earlier. Due to high spatial resolution, wave tracking has provided an accurate measurement of the varying breakpoint. These breaking locations are very well described ( ) by the wave‐height to effective‐depth ratio ( γ ). However, for any given Iribarren number, this γ is shown to increase with f g . Therefore, a modified Iribarren number is proposed to include the grouping structure, leading to a considerable improvement in reproducing the measured γ ‐values. Within the surf zone, the behavior of the Incident Long Wave also depends on the group modulation. For low f g conditions, the lf wave decays only slightly by transferring energy back to the hf wave components. However, for high f g wave conditions, strong dissipation of low frequency (lf) components occurs close to the shoreline associated with lf wave breaking. This mechanism is explained by the growth of the lf wave height, induced partly by the self‐self interaction of f g , and partly by the nonlinear coupling between the primary frequencies and f g .