Investigations of Freak Waves on Uniform Current

Freak waves (e.g. New Wave recorded at the Draupner platform in the North Sea on 1st, January, 1995) are extremely large water waves which may pose real threat to human activities in ocean despite their low possibility of occurrence. A great deal of effort has been made to experimentally and numerically study the generation mechanisms and the physical properties of freak waves [1-2]. However, most of them are carried out in absence of currents. In fact, the wave-current interaction plays an important role in the formation of freak waves [3]. It may initiate a freak wave [4] or influence the properties of freak waves generated by other mechanisms [5-6], e.g. spatial-temporal focusing, modulation instability. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out further investigation addressing the above two issues to gain better understanding of freak waves.