LAUSR

Abstract Extensive laboratory experiments were carried out to investigate the statistical characteristics of wave heights on steep submerged (platform) reefs. Compared with the situation on a gently-sloping beach, the extraordinary wave breaking induced by abrupt depth reduction over a steep fore-reef slope makes the wave height distribution on the reef flat to differ substantially. Existing models of wave height distributions on shallow beaches such as by Battjes and Groenendijk (2000) thus come out to be less reliable. To resolve this, a new composite Weibull distribution model has been proposed and formulated based on 540 measured wave records at various locations across the reef flat. The model is generally composed out of three Weibull parts and collapses to a two-Weibull distribution in a situation of low relative wave energy. The newly-proposed model shows good predictive capacity on most common characteristic wave heights in comparison with the present and several existing laboratory datasets.