Application of computer graphics on water wave problems

To make water wave graphs more realistic in vision, and to display the process of wave transformation more clearly, a computer graphic software is applied to paint water wave profiles in color. As demonstration, two cases were studied in this paper? wave evolution around cylinder and in harbor basin, both having arbitrary shapes. Surface elevations were calculated using boundary element method. Calculated results were then transformed into 3-D color graphs, to be displayed on monitor by the software. Finally, animation frames of wave evolution was presented by applying assembly programs to control the storage and display of graphic images for each time step. It is concluded that, satisfactory results could be achieved through this procedure.