AWARDEE OF EARTH SCIENCES PRIZE

WEN SHENGCHANG

Abstract

Prof.Wen Shengchang(S.C.Wen)wen bor on Nov.1,1921 in Henan Province,China.Originally majored in mechanical enginering, he has been involed in Shandong and research since 1953.He taught in the Department of Oceanography in Shandong University and Shandong College of Oceanography,Qingdao,being the President of the latter college in 1984-1987.One of his graduate students was the first one who won his doctorate degree in a Chinese institution in field of marine science.
Wen's field of interest is ocean wave theory and application.He combined in the 1960s of the last century the method of energy balance and the spectral concept, both being hitherto employed at that time,and developed methods for wind wave and swell computation.
Wen has since the 1980s tried to derive analytically the wind-wave spectrum which is usually obtained by fitting field or laboratory data.After improving his derivation in several papers,he showed theoretically on quite a general and easily realizable basis that a wind-wave frequency spectrum put in aproper nondimentional form can be expressed as a sum of two spectra at two growing stages.He further constructed spectra for both very young and fully developed spectra and obtained by superposition of them aspectrum for any status of wave development.He also proposed analytical fomof wind-wave directional spectrum,which, after being simplified,can be used conveniently.
In 1989 Wen proposed anew hybrid wave model in which the net sum of the usual source terms is calculated from empirical growth formulas of wave height and period. The model is reliable and so simple that it requires only approximately 1/60 of the CPU time as required by the currently most popular WAM model.The pyoposed model has been incorated with success in an operational wave prediction system run by China's national marine environmental forcasting center.
With a view to bypassing the difficulties and shortcomings of the so-called third generation wave model,described as the state-of-the-art one,Wen in recent years formulated a spectral model based on an adoped wind-wave directional spectrum.Compared with the former, the new model shows its greater reliability in the computed spectral structure,more sensitive resolving power in depicting the evolving spectrum under sudden shift of wind direction,equal capability to cope with the rapdly dropping wind speed,better suitability to compute the swell propagation,greater feasibility to be improved,and much less computer time required in usage.