STWAVE: Steady-State Spectral Wave Model User's Manual for STWAVE, Version 6.0

Estimating nearshore wave transformation and wind-wave growth is a critical component of many coastal engineering projects, e.g., predicting shoreline change, designing and maintaining coastal structures, and simulating coastal storm events. Performing physical model studies or gathering field data is not always a feasible option, and, as a result, the use of numerical models for simulating these complex coastal hydrodynamics has become a universal practice. STWAVE (STeady-state spectral WAVE), a nearshore spectral wave model, was developed by the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory (CHL) to accurately simulate nearshore wave propagation and transformation including refraction, shoaling, breaking, and wind-wave generation. Recently, CHL has further enhanced STWAVE to include both half-plane and full-plane capabilities within a single executable; improved and streamlined file formats; and made it Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) compliant, which allows for easier coupling to other models. STWAVE now runs in serial mode as well as parallel in time or space on both personal computing (PC) and high-performance computing (HPC) systems. This report describes STWAVE version 6.0 capabilities, features, theory, and implementation. In depth descriptions of model parameters and examples of the new file formats are also provided. The original document contains color images.