Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 242 (2020) 106860

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Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science

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Bivariate copula modelling of successive wave periods in combined

sea states
Weinan Huang , Xinyu Han , Sheng Dong *
College of Engineering, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266100, PR China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The joint distribution of successive wave periods plays a very important role in the study of resonant effects on
Successive wave periods coastal and marine structures. Until recently, studies on the statistics of consecutive periods have almost
Bivariate distribution exclusively focused on single-wave systems. This paper proposes a parametric model established from a com­
Parametric model
bination of a mixture lognormal distribution and Gaussian copula to describe individual successive wave periods
Mixture model
Gaussian copula
in combined sea states. This new model, together with two additional distributions based on the conditional
Combined sea states modelling method and the copula function, respectively, are compared, with reference to secondary wave data
collected in laboratory experiments and simulated data obtained by a six-parameter Ochi-Hubble model. Nine
types of combined sea states are considered and discussed. The conditional probability of the wave period, given
by the previous wave period, is used to assess the application of the adopted models to the resonance study.
Conventional models are unsuitable when the patterns exhibit multimodal characteristics and involve two-wave
systems whose spectral peaks are widely separated. The mixture model provides a more accurate description of
the bivariate distribution and improved performance in the analysis of the resonant effects on marine structures
than the other two approaches.

1. Introduction Bretschneider (1959), Myrhaug and Rue (1993b) presented a bivariate

The joint behaviour of successive individual wave periods is of sig­
nificant interest in ocean and coastal engineering applications, such as
the analysis of resonant oscillations of ships and structures (Myrhaug
et al., 2000) and wave power extraction (Venugopal and Smith, 2007).
Although many studies have been performed on the statistics of suc­
cessive wave heights (Arhan and Ezraty, 1978; Longuet–Higgins, 1984;
Wist et al., 2002; Fedele, 2005), surf parameters (Myrhaug and Rue,
2009; Myrhaug and Leira, 2011), wave steepness (Myrhaug and Rue,
1993a), and other simultaneously occurring ocean wave parameters,
studies of the bivariate distribution of successive wave periods have
received less attention.
To date, three types of parametric methods have been used to model
the bivariate distribution. The first method adopted the two-
dimensional Weibull distribution function. Kimura (1980) focused on
the statistical properties of the run of wave periods falling in the reso­
nant period band of the oscillation system consecutively, and a
two-dimensional Weibull distribution was applied to fit the transition
probability of the wave period train. Based on the wave period model of
Weibull distribution by transforming a two-dimensional Rayleigh dis­
tribution. Myrhaug et al. (1995) used this model to investigate its
application to the rolling of ships in beam seas. Myrhaug and Rue (1998)
used a revised version of the two-dimensional Weibull distribution
based on a best fit of the Weibull function to the marginal distribution.
This model was compared with the previous method of Myrhaug and
Rue (1993b) using observed data; it showed better agreement. Rodrí­
guez and Guedes Soares (2001) used the Myrhaug and Rue (1993b)
model to examine the degree of dependence between successive wave
periods in mixed sea states using simulated data, which were divided
into nine categories according to the Sea Swell Energy Ratio (SSER) and
Inter-modal Distance (ID) proposed by Rodríguez and Guedes Soares
(1999). The results showed that the pattern of the distribution was
significantly affected by the superposition of the two-wave systems, and
the two-dimensional Weibull model was incapable of describing the
modes. The second method utilised the conditional modelling approach.
Myrhaug and Slaattelid (1999) established a joint distribution by uti­
lising the conditional probability density function. To construct this
model, a combination of two two-parameter Weibull models was used to

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: dongsh@ouc.edu.cn (S. Dong).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2020.106860
Received 28 January 2020; Received in revised form 20 May 2020; Accepted 21 May 2020
Available online 23 May 2020
0272-7714/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
W. Huang et al.
fit the marginal distribution and conditional distribution of the wave
periods. The statistical properties of the measurements at the Frigg field
were well represented by this model. Myrhang et al. (2000) used the
models of Myrhaug and Rue (1993b, 1998) and Myrhaug and Slaattelid
(1999) to describe the statistics of successive wave periods and discussed
the risk assessment of the resonant period of ships in beam waves. The
third method used the copula function to calculate the joint distribution.
Wist (2003) applied the Gaussian copula to describe the joint statistics of
successive wave periods by Nataf transformation. This univariate dis­
tribution of wave periods was modelled with a generalised Gamma
distribution. The results of the laboratory data, field data, and simulated
data showed that this model provided better agreement compared with
the two-dimensional Weibull distribution model. They also indicated
that the pattern of successive wave periods for large waves could be
approximated by a Gaussian probability density function.
A copula-based approach for the modelling of ocean wave conditions
has received increased attention recently. After the copula theory was
first proposed by Sklar (1959), various types of copulas have been
widely used to build joint distribution models in the fields of coastal and
ocean engineering. Corbella and Stretch (2013) attempted to provide
realistic storm simulations using the Archimedean copula method. Three
construction techniques were used to create trivariate copula models for
describing sea storms. Ant~ ao and Guedes Soares (2014) modelled the
bivariate distribution of wave steepness and wave height using five
different copula functions. Dong et al. (2015) investigated the
short-term distribution of group height and group length using labora­
tory data, field data, and simulated data. They chose the Clayton copula
to describe the bivariate distribution according to the tail dependence
structure of these two variables. Results showed that the copula method
provided an improved fit over the conditional modelling method. Zhang
et al. (2018) performed a comparison study of asymmetric copulas and
traditional copulas on the modelling of bivariate ocean parameters.
They suggested that the observed data from the asymmetric dependence
structure could be described by the asymmetric copula more realisti­
cally. The limitations of symmetric copula have been studied by Vanem
(2016). Yang and Qian (2019) presented a trivariate joint distribution
analysis of wind speeds, storm surges, and rainstorms using four copulas.
The marginal cumulative distributions for these variables were identi­
fied via several commonly used univariate models. Recent advances
have shown, that when using the copula method, the univariate distri­
bution can be chosen more freely, and the dependency among random
variables can be efficiently and accurately defined (Li et al., 2018).
One distinctive feature of the copula approach is that the types of
marginals can be determined independently of the dependence between
the variables (Zhang et al., 2018). There are several theoretical distri­
butions of wave periods, such as those proposed by Cavani�e et al.
(1976), Longuet–Higgins (1975, 1983), Shum and Melville (1984), and
Xu et al. (2004), among others. Nevertheless, most of these models are
based on the narrow-band approximation, which implies that these
models do not apply to broadband waves. This statement is supported by
literature that discusses the applicability of theoretical models on
observational data (Goda, 1978; Sobey, 1992; Zhang et al., 2013).
Although several techniques have been put forward to improve the
theoretical distributions (Lindgren and Rychlik, 1982; Stansell et al.,
2004; Zhang and Guedes Soares, 2016), thus far they have produced
very little effect (Zheng et al., 2006). It is now widely recognised that the
distribution of wave periods is extremely sensitive to the bandwidth and
shape of the spectra, which could not be taken into consideration by the
above models. Owing to the differences between the assumptions
incorporated into theoretical distributions and real sea waves, scientists
and engineers have attempted to adopt some parametric models. Myr­
haug and Kvålsvold, 1995 carried out a comprehensive comparison
study that suggested establishing the distribution using parametric
models. Myrhaug and Kjeldsen (1984) described the short-term statistics
of wave periods using the Weibull distribution, and utilised the condi­
tional probability function to construct the joint distribution of wave
2
Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 242 (2020) 106860
heights and periods. Kimura (1981) analysed the relationship between
the shape parameter of the Weibull distribution and the spectral width
parameter. Wist et al. (2004) found that the generalised Gamma distri­
bution better captured the shape of the distribution than the Lon­
guet–Higgins (1975, 1983) model and the Cavani� e et al. (1976) model.
Sea states with a bimodal spectral structure could occur owing to the
mixture of various wave systems, as represented by the coexistence of
wind waves and swells (Aranuvachapun, 1987; Guedes Soares and
Carvalho, 2012). However, studies on the statistical properties of wave
periods in a combined sea state are scarce. Rodrí;guez et al. (2004)
investigated the statistics of zero-up-crossing wave periods in nine types
of mixed sea states using simulated data. They reported that only the
Myrhaug and Slaattelid (1999) model provided an adequate fit, whereas
the Cavani� e et al. (1976) and Longuet-Higgins (1983) models diverged
considerably from the observed distributions. Their study supported the
suspicions of Myrhaug and Slaattelid (1999) that the various statistics
for shorter and longer periods might be attributed to the mix of
two-wave systems. Guedes Soares and Carvalho (2003, 2012) utilised
observational data measured off the Portuguese and Spanish coasts to
verify the above results.
According to Sobey (1992) and Rodrí;guez et al. (2004), the proba­
bility distribution of wave periods may present a well-defined bimodal
structure, particularly in sea states with two-peaked spectra. Consid­
ering the suggestion by Carta and Ramírez (2007) and Chang (2010)
that the mixture distribution model could be a good choice for such data,
the marginal distribution of individual wave periods will be established
using mixture models in the present work. To date, several univariate
mixture models have been proposed and applied to wind energy, such as
the mixture Weibull distribution (Jaramillo and Borja, 2004), mixture
Gamma-Weibull function (Chang, 2011), and Weibull-extreme value
distribution (Kollu et al., 2012). From these studies, it is now generally
accepted that mixture models have enormous strengths in fitting the
distributions of both unimodal and multimodal structures. Applications
that wish to use this innovative approach must now face the problem of
how to estimate the parameters of a mixture distribution. As recom­
mended by McLachlan and Peel (2000), the expectation-maximisation
(EM) method is adopted in this study. The EM algorithm is a useful
tool for solving maximum likelihood estimates of mixture distributions
(Gupta and Chen, 2011). A detailed introduction to the application of
the EM algorithm to mixture models can be found in Redner and Walker
(1984) and Moon (1996). Owing to its efficiency and reliability, the EM
algorithm has been widely applied in coastal and ocean engineering
(Soukissian, 2014; Perera and Mo, 2016; Lin-Ye et al., 2016; Weng et al.,
2018; Lin and Dong, 2019).
In this study, we establish the joint distribution of two successive
wave periods in combined sea states using the copula method. Section 2
summarises the parametric models of Myrhaug and Slaattelid (1999)
and Wist (2003), along with a brief introduction to the marginal dis­
tribution of wave periods. A new distribution, based on the finite
mixture model and Gaussian copula, is proposed. In the same section,
error metrics for univariate distributions are defined for the assessment
of the parametric models. Section 3 briefly describes the secondary wave
data generated by laboratory experiments and numerically simulated
data. Section 4 compares the various bivariate distribution models for
consecutive wave periods. Both experimental data and simulated data
are discussed. This is followed by a summary of the major findings in
Section 5.
2. Methodology
Owing to the significant deviation between theoretical models and
actual wave data, parametric distributions may be a good choice for
modelling the distribution of a wave period, T. Here, the wave periods
are made dimensionless by:
W. Huang et al. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 242 (2020) 106860

Fig. 1. Sketch of the experimental setup.

Tm1 Z
τ¼ ; (1) 1 u
m0 IΓ ðλ; uÞ ¼ expð xÞxλ 1 dx: (10)
ΓðλÞ 0

Where mk is the kth wave spectral moment, as given by: The probability density function of the generalised Gamma distri­
Z ∞ bution is given by:
mk ¼ f k Sðf Þ df k ¼ 0; 1; 2; ::: (2)
0 αταλ 1 h �τ �α i
f ðτÞ ¼ exp ; (11)
ΓðλÞυαλ υ
2.1. A combination of two weibull distributions
Where ν is the scale parameter and λ and α are the shape parameters. The
Myrhaug and Slaattelid (1999) utilised the conditional probability joint probability density function is expressed as:
function to establish a joint distribution (denoted as the MS model), as
f ðτ1 ; τ2 Þ ¼ cðFðτ1 Þ; Fðτ2 ÞÞ⋅f ðτ1 Þf ðτ2 Þ; (12)
given by:
f ðτ1 ; τ2 Þ ¼ f ðτ2 jτ1 Þf ðτ1 Þ; (3) Where c(F(τ1), F(τ2)) ¼ ∂C(F(τ1), F(τ2))/∂F(τ1)∙∂F(τ2). Since a preference
for the Gaussian copula in multivariate cases has emerged, Wist (2003)
In view of the various statistical properties of shorter and longer adopted this type of copula, as given by:
periods in combined sea states, the marginal and conditional distribu­ �
tions of wave periods are fitted with a combination of two Weibull Fðτ1 ; τ2 Þ ¼ Φ Φ 1 ðFðτ1 ÞÞ; Φ 1 ðFðτ2 ÞÞ ; (13)
distributions:
1
Where Φ is the standard Gaussian distribution and Φ is its inverse.
f ðτÞ ¼ f1 ðτÞ þ f2 ðτÞ; (4)

Where 2.3. Mixture model

8 � �β h � τ �β i
<β τ 1
0 � τ � τc
f1 ðτÞ ¼ α α
exp
α ; and (5) In the present study, we propose a new bivariate distribution model
:
0 elsewhere based on the Gaussian copula. Unlike the Wist model, the marginal
distribution of the wave periods is fitted to a mixture lognormal distri­
8 � �κ
<κ τ
1 h � τ �κ i bution, as recommended by Huang and Dong (2019).
exp τ > τc
f2 ðτÞ ¼ ρ ρ ρ ; (6) As one of the most commonly used univariate distributions in ocean
:
0 elsewhere engineering, the probability density function of the lognormal distri­
bution can be written as:
Where α and β (ρ and κ) are the scale parameter and shape parameter of � �
1 ðln τ μÞ2
f1(τ) (f2(τ)), respectively. τc is the intersection point between f1(τ) and f ðτÞ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffi exp for τ > 0; (14)
2πστ 2σ 2
f2(τ), as given by:
�αβ �1=ðβ κÞ Where σ and μ are the standard deviation and mathematical expectation
τc ¼ : (7) of lnτ, respectively. The corresponding cumulative distribution function
ρκ
is given by:
In this way, periods shorter than τc are fitted by f1(τ), while those
Z τ � �
longer than τc are described by f2(τ). 1 1 ðln τ μÞ2
FðτÞ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffi exp dτ : (15)
2πσ 0 τ 2σ 2

2.2. Gamma distribution model Considering the bimodal structure of the wave period distribution in
mixed sea states, the mixture model is used to construct the mixture
Wist (2003) recommended constructing the bivariate distribution of lognormal distribution. The probability density function of a finite
successive wave periods using copulas (denoted as the Wist model), as mixture model consisting of d components is given by:
given by:
X
d � �
Fðτ1 ; τ2 Þ ¼ CðFðτ1 Þ; Fðτ2 ÞÞ; (8) f ðτjζÞ ¼ ωj fj τ�θj ; (16)
j¼1

Where C is the copula function and F (τ1) and F (τ2) are the generalised Pd
Gamma distribution: Where each ωj is the weight of each component satisfying j¼1 ωj ¼ 1.
h �τ �α i fj(τ|θj) denotes the jth wave period probability density function para­
FðτÞ ¼ IΓ λ; ; (9) meterised by θj. ζ denotes the set of all parameters of the mixture model.
υ
When there is only one component (d ¼ 1), Eq. (16) becomes the con­
Where IΓ is the incomplete Gamma function, as given by: ventional distribution model.

3
W. Huang et al. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 242 (2020) 106860

Table 1
Experimental wave conditions.
Case Water depth (m) HS (cm) TS (s) Sampling interval (s)

1 0.96 17.78 2.63 0.13

2 0.96 16.00 2.44 0.13

Fig. 3. Average spectral density of the experimental data.

Table 3
The values of the parameters and descriptive statistics of the target spectra
(Rodrı ́guez and Guedes Soares, 2001).
Fig. 2. Power spectra of the incident waves. Sea Hs- Hs- fp- fp- λsw λws SSER ID
state sw(m) ws(m) sw(Hz) ws(Hz)
class
Table 2
Descriptive statistics of the experimental data. Ia 5.5 3.5 0.070 0.110 3.0 6.5 0.800 0.220
IIa 6.5 2.0 0.070 0.150 3.5 4.0 0.555 0.364
Hs- Hs- fp- fp- SSER ID
IIIa 5.5 3.5 0.045 0.155 3.0 6.0 0.800 0.550
sw(cm) ws(cm) sw(Hz) ws(Hz)
Ib 2.0 6.5 0.070 0.110 3.0 6.5 1.800 0.220
Wave 3.8231 3.4245 0.3635 0.7234 0.8023 0.3312 IIb 2.0 6.5 0.070 0.150 4.0 3.5 1.800 0.364
parameters IIIb 2.0 6.5 0.045 0.155 2.0 7.0 1.800 0.550
Ic 4.1 5.0 0.070 0.110 2.1 2.5 1.100 0.220
IIc 4.1 5.0 0.070 0.150 2.1 2.5 1.220 0.364
The number of components in the mixture model should be deter­ IIIc 4.1 5.0 0.045 0.155 2.1 2.5 1.100 0.550

mined first, which, while difficult, is extremely important. Three com­

mon strategies for choosing the number of components have been solve this problem. The EM method is one of the algorithms used to find
developed (McLachlan and Peel, 2000): 1) assessment of the number of the maximum likelihood estimates in a mixture. The core of this method
modes (Silverman, 1981; Wong, 1985; Fischer et al., 1994; Anandkumar involves finding the solutions that maximise the expected log likelihood
et al., 2012); 2) the method of moments (Furman and Lindsay, 1994; function. When using this method, a subsidiary variable v ¼ {vi}i¼1,2, …,n
Dacunha-Castelle and Gassiat, 1997; Vlassis and Likas, 1999); and 3) the (vi 2 f1; 2; :::; dg) should be introduced to represent which of the com­
use of penalised likelihood (Chen et al., 2001; Crainiceanu and Ruppert, ponents generates each corresponding observation. For a specified
2004; Fonseca and Cardoso, 2007; Wong et al., 2018). The last component,
approach, which includes the penalised likelihood criteria, is the pri­ � �
mary method used to resolve the number of components in the mixture ωj fj τðiÞ�θj
f ðvi ¼ jjτðiÞ; ζÞ ¼ d : (19)
model to achieve a suitable density estimate. According to Campbell P � �
ωg fg τðiÞ�θg
et al. (1997) and Dziak et al. (2018), the Bayesian information criterion g¼1
(BIC) appears to be adequate for obtaining the optimal number of
components. It is given by: As stated previously, the EM algorithm focuses on the expected log
likelihood function, called the Q function. The expression of the Q
BIC ¼ 2LðζÞ þ N log n; (17) function in the kth iteration is given by:

Where N denotes the total number of parameters in the distribution and

n denotes the sample size. L(ζ) is the log likelihood of Eq. (16), as given The issue now becomes finding the ζ that maximises the Q function.
by: The EM algorithm consists of an E-step and M-step. The E-step is used to
! calculate the Q function, and the M-step is used to solve for the pa­
Xn X
d � �
LðζÞ ¼ log ωj fj τðiÞ�θj : (18) rameters that maximise the Q function. From Eq. (20), it can be easily
i¼1 j¼1
seen that the Q function is composed of two terms, which can be dealt
The optimal number of components can be determined by minimis­ with independently. The constrained optimisation of first term can be
ing Eq. (17). solved by (Gupta and Chen, 2011):
The customary method used to obtain the maximum likelihood es­ � � �
� ðkÞ
ωðkÞ
j fj τðiÞ�θj
timate is to identify the parameters that maximise the likelihood func­ 1X n
(21)
ðkþ1Þ
ωj ¼ � � �;
tion. Nevertheless, the dependence of the likelihood function on the n i¼1 P
d
� ðkÞ
ωðkÞ
g fg τðiÞ�θg
parameters is very complex in a mixture model and brings additional g¼1
difficulty to the calculation. Some iterative procedures are required to

4
W. Huang et al. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 242 (2020) 106860

� � X n
Q ζ�ζðkÞ ¼ Ehi jτðiÞ;ζðkÞ ½ln f ðτðiÞ; vi jζÞ�
i¼1

X
n X
d
� �
¼ f vi ¼ jjτðiÞ; ζðkÞ ln f ðτðiÞ; vi jζ
i¼1 j¼1

� � �
� ðkÞ
Xn X d ωðkÞ
j fj τðiÞ�θj � � �� (20)
�
¼
P
d � � � ln ωj fj τðiÞ θj
� ðkÞ
i¼1 j¼1
ωðkÞ
g gf τ ðiÞ�θ g
g¼1

� � � � � �
� ðkÞ � ðkÞ
Xn X d ωðkÞ
j fj τðiÞ�θj Xn X d ωðkÞ
j fj τðiÞ�θj � �
ω �
¼
P
d � � � ln j þ
P
d � � � ln fj τðiÞ θj
i¼1 j¼1 ðkÞ � ðkÞ i¼1 j¼1 ðkÞ � ðkÞ
ωg fg τðiÞ�θg ωg fg τðiÞ�θg
g¼1 g¼1

while the parameters in each component can be calculated by max­ That is, the initial values of θj can be estimated using the measurements
imising the Q function with respect to θj, as given by: belonging to group j, and the mixing proportions, ωj, can be initialised
as:
∂QðkÞ
¼ 0: (22) n
∂θj (23)
j
ωð0Þ
j ¼ ;
n
As an iterative procedure, the EM method should be initialised. In
practice, it is common to specify the initial ζ with a random starting where nj is the subsample size of group j. The EM method can be sum­
value. As illustrated by McLachlan and Peel (2000), the observations are marised as iteratively performing the E-step and M-step until the esti­
divided into d groups randomly. Each measurement, τi, assigned to the mate stops changing. Many studies have shown that the EM algorithm
jth class is regarded as the element generated by the jth component only. has the advantage of reliable convergence (Redner and Walker, 1984).
Completion criterion should be specified to ensure precision of the
calculation. The monotonicity of the EM method allows us to define the
convergence criteria by limiting the size of the difference between the
consecutive log likelihood functions, as given by:
� ðkþ1Þ � ��
�L ζ L ζðkÞ � < ε; ε > 0: (24)

It is worth pointing out that the EM method only finds local, sta­
tionary points, meaning that one run of the algorithm does not neces­
sarily obtain the global optimum. In a specific implementation, this can
be addressed by running the EM with multiple initialisations and
choosing the solution that maximises the log likelihood.

2.4. Error metrics

Several available error metrics were adopted to evaluate the fitness

of the univariate parametric models. Let Fe(τ) and Ft(τ) denote the
empirical and theoretical probability functions, respectively. The
squared Euclidean distance, D2, Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) distance, Dn,

Fig. 4. Marginal distribution of wave periods for experimental data. Table 5

Parameters of the mixture lognormal distribution for experimental data.
Table 4 Component Parameter
Number of components in mixture model for experimental data.
Experimental data j ωj μj σj
Models Mixture lognormal 1 0.0969 0.4160 0.0745
2 0.3989 0.0688 0.4783
Experimental data Number of components 3
3 0.5042 0.4131 0.2539
BIC ( � 103) 1.6103

Table 7
Table 6
Statistical test of marginal distributions for experimental data.
Error metrics of marginal distributions for experimental data.
MS model Generalised Gamma Mixture lognormal
Models MS Generalised Mixture
model Gamma lognormal p-value Hypothesis p-value Hypothesis p- Hypothesis
test result test result value test result
Experimental D2 ( � 19.6167 26.0151 0.8651
data 10 4) 7.3799 reject 1.2457 reject 0.1148 accept
Dn 0.0954 0.0809 0.0248 � � 10 13
AD 23.1215 32.5557 0.9518 10 19

5
W. Huang et al. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 242 (2020) 106860

Fig. 5. Bivariate distribution of successive wave periods for experimental data: (a) MS model; (b) Wist model; (c) mixture model. Red line denotes the empirical
distribution, while the solid line denotes the fitted model. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version
of this article.)

Table 9
Parameters of the mixture lognormal distribution for simulated data.
Component Parameter

j ωj μj σj
Ia 1 0.2144 0.2304 0.1074
2 0.0957 0.4314 0.3304
3 0.6898 0.1169 0.2351
IIa 1 0.3329 0.5081 0.3764
2 0.6671 0.0944 0.1283
IIIa 1 0.2211 0.0572 0.2132
2 0.1929 0.5018 0.1039
3 0.1212 0.8526 0.3229
4 0.4648 0.7116 0.1864
Ib 1 0.4356 0.0192 0.2585
2 0.5644 0.026 0.0877
IIb 1 0.0198 0.5028 0.3881
2 0.1801 0.0421 0.0747
3 0.4279 0.0571 0.1694
4 0.3722 0.0119 0.3122
IIIb 1 0.1346 0.1139 0.4165
Fig. 6. Conditional probability of wave period given the previous wave period 2 0.3772 0.076 0.1796
for experimental data. 3 0.4882 0.0698 0.0756
Ic 1 0.8996 0.0398 0.2717
2 0.1004 0.4448 0.3865
IIc 1 0.1403 0.4646 0.1463
Table 8 2 0.0572 0.6082 0.4299
Number of components in mixture models for simulated data. 3 0.8025 0.1992 0.2647
IIIc 1 0.4449 0.3602 0.1741
Models Mixture lognormal 2 0.5084 0.1592 0.4391
Ia Number of components 3 3 0.0466 0.7476 0.1502
BIC ( � 103) 1.1254

IIa Number of components 2

and Anderson-Darling distance, AD, applied in the present work are,
BIC ( � 103) 0.5838
respectively, defined as:
IIIa Number of components 4
BIC ( � 103) 4.1963 1X n
D2 ¼ ðFe ðτðiÞÞ Ft ðτðiÞÞÞ2 ; (25)
Ib Number of components 2 n i¼1
BIC ( � 103) 6.9106

IIb Number of components 4 Dn ¼ maxjFe ðτÞ Ft ðτÞj; and (26)

BIC ( � 103) 2.8516

IIIb Number of components 3

1X n
AD ¼ n fð2i 1Þ½lnðFt ðτðiÞÞÞ þ lnð1 Ft ðτðn þ 1 iÞÞÞ�g: (27)
BIC ( � 103) 1.0176 n i¼1
Ic Number of components 2
BIC ( � 103) 2.6974 3. Data description and analysis
IIc Number of components 3
BIC ( � 103) 5.9499 3.1. Experimental program
IIIc Number of components 3
BIC ( � 103) 5.0504 Long swells propagating over submerged bars, natural reefs, and
breakwaters, can lead to the decomposition of the initial wave into high-
frequency waves (Beji and Battjes, 1993; Li and Yu, 2009; Kuznetsov and

6
W. Huang et al.
Fig. 7. Marginal distributions of wave periods for simulated data.
Saprykina, 2012). Such waves, formed on the lee side of offshore
structures, are called secondary waves. The wave energy transfer, which
is ascribed to nonlinear wave interactions (Beji and Battjes, 1994;
Masselink, 1998; S�en� echal et al., 2001), has been demonstrated via the
separate peaks of a wave spectra. The peculiarity of the secondary wave
containing different wave systems, as well as its significant effect on the
stability condition of moored ships, inspires us to conduct experiments
to examine the wave patterns from a mix of different systems. The ex­
periments were performed in a wave flume 68 m long, 1 m wide, and 1.5
m high. The water depth of the experiment was set to 0.96 m. Random
waves were generated by a wave maker equipped at one end of the
flume. Located 32 m away from the wave generator, a vertical break­
water model was constructed with a horizontal plane 0.98 m above the
bottom of the tank. At both ends of the basin, wave absorbers were
installed to mitigate wave reflections. The water surface elevation was
synchronously measured using three wave gauges located along the
length of the flume. Gauge No. 1 was placed on the right side of the
breakwater and served as the reference for the initial waves. The other
two gauges were used to capture the secondary wave signals. The cross
section of the experimental setup is illustrated in Fig. 1.
Random waves were generated using the JONSWAP spectra. The
incident wave parameters used are listed in Table 1. Fig. 2 illustrates the
power spectra of the initial waves. Each time series recorded was 2200 s
in length, with a sampling interval of 0.13 s. The wave data, with two-
peak spectra, was identified using established methods (Ewans et al.,
2006). The mixed wave conditions were characterised by means of two
7
Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 242 (2020) 106860
dimensionless parameters proposed by Rodríguez and Guedes Soares
(1999). The first of these is the SSER, which indicates the relative ratio of
the energies of the two-wave systems as given by:
� �
m0ws
SSER ¼ ð0 < SSER < 1Þ; (28)
m0sw
where the subscripts ws and sw represent wind-sea and swell systems,
respectively. The sea state with an SSER value larger than one is
dominated by wind waves, while the SSER value of a swell-dominated
sea state is smaller than one. If the value of the SSER is close to one,
the wind-sea and swell components coexist with comparable energies.
The other parameter is the ID, which describes the frequency separation
between the spectral peaks, and is given by:
!
fpws fpsw
ID ¼ ð0 < ID < 1Þ; (29)
fpws þ fpsw
where fp is the spectral peak frequency. Intuitively, a smaller ID value
indicates that the peak frequencies are close to each other and vice
versa.
Based on the values of the SSER and ID, the experimental data in­
dicates a wave field dominated by lower frequency wave components
with spectral peaks separated by a medium distance. The average
descriptive statistics are listed in Table 2. For waves travelling over the
breakwater, the values of the SSER vary between 0.6609 and 0.8978,
and the values of the ID range from 0.3180 to 0.3899, corresponding to
W. Huang et al. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 242 (2020) 106860

Table 10 The six-parameter model proposed by Ochi and Hubble (1976) was
Error metrics of marginal distributions for simulated data. chosen to describe the target spectra, as given by:
Models MS model Generalised Gamma Mixture lognormal � �λj
2 4
4λj þ1 4
f " � �� �4 #
Ia D ( � 10 ) 0.9191 2.8777 0.1009 π X 4 pj
2
HSj2 4λj þ 1 fpj
Dn 0.0188 0.0354 0.0093 Sðf Þ ¼ � exp ; (30)
AD 4.3125 14.8714 0.4880
2 j¼1 Γ λj f 4λj þ1 4 f

IIa D2 ( � 10 4
) 14.7228 82.3320 0.5673
Dn 0.0718 0.1707 0.0192
where HS and λ are the significant wave height and spectral shape pa­
AD 55.4475 297.3380 2.8241 rameters, respectively. The subscript j represents the component of the
wave system. The swell system is denoted by j ¼ 1, while j ¼ 2 denotes
IIIa D2 ( � 10 4
) 86.5585 62.6060 0.0141
Dn 0.1929 0.1557 0.0052 the wind-sea system. Table 3 lists the parameters of the target spectra,
AD 405.9298 272.5791 0.1387 which were aligned with Rodrı ́guez and Guedes Soares (2004). Please
Ib D2 ( � 10 4
) 18.3840 21.9899 0.1167 note that a, b, and c denote the sea states dominated by swell, wind
Dn 0.0686 0.0771 0.0113 wave, and influenced by two systems with comparable energies,
AD 148.3795 112.2627 1.0108 respectively. The categories I, II, and III indicate the spectral peaks are
IIb D2 ( � 10 4
) 22.8999 15.5834 0.0160 separated by short, medium, and long distances, respectively.
Dn 0.0836 0.0669 0.0049 In accordance with the parameters listed in Table 3, the wave records
AD 149.7291 110.6908 0.1233 were simulated with a length of 4096 s and a time step of 0.5 s. Twenty
IIIb D2 ( � 10 4
) 93.4665 71.3443 0.0799 realisations for each target spectrum were simulated to ensure that the
Dn 0.1656 0.1482 0.0086 results maintained statistical stabilisation and reliability. The zero-up-
AD 605.8166 490.4813 0.5717 crossing wave periods were extracted from both the experimental and
Ic D2 ( � 10 4
) 3.1622 1.2631 0.5826 simulated data.
Dn 0.0355 0.0208 0.0171
AD 13.4241 6.2457 3.2426
4. Bivariate distribution of successive wave periods
IIc D2 ( � 10 4
) 1.9603 13.7528 0.0447
Dn 0.0376 0.0671 0.0052
Owing to the difficulties in establishing the bivariate distribution of
AD 12.1733 86.6790 0.3043
wave periods in theoretical form, a novel parametric distribution based
IIIc D2 ( � 10 4
) 4.6679 51.6634 0.0403 on the mixture model was used to describe the patterns of combined sea
Dn 0.0615 0.1297 0.0066
states using both experimental and simulated data. Conventional ap­
AD 27.0028 314.6404 0.4123
proaches, including the MS and Wist models, were adopted for com­
parison. Additionally, owing to the inadequacies of the two-dimensional
category-IIa according to Rodrı ́guez and Guedes Soares (2004). Fig. 3 Weibull model in mixed sea states (Rodrı ́guez and Guedes Soares, 2001);
illustrates the average spectral densities of the secondary waves, it was not considered in this study. As a quantitative analysis of the
providing the perfect counterpoint to the single-peaked spectra of the resonant period of marine structures, the conditional probability of the
incident waves. Undoubtedly, the phenomenon of high frequency en­ wave period given the previous wave period was used to evaluate the
ergy generation is elucidated by the laboratory experiments. parametric models. This probability is expressed as the probability of a
wave period extending over an interval [τ1*, τ2*], given that the pre­
vious wave period extended over the same interval. For a specified τ, it is
3.2. Numerical simulations given by:
R τ*2 R τ*2
Evidently, experimental data cannot cover all types of combined sea � � τ*1 τ*1
f ðτ1 ; τ2 Þdτ1 dτ2
states. According to Forristall (2017), the statistical properties of wave
*
1
*� *
P τ < τ2 < τ τ < τ1 < τ
2 1
*
2 ¼ R τ*2 ; (31)
data simulated with wave spectra match the observations of two-peaked τ*
f ðτ1 Þdτ1
1

spectra accurately. Therefore, numerical simulations were performed to

generate the various types of sea states documented by Rodrı ́guez and where τ1* ¼ τ – 0.1, τ2* ¼ τ þ 0.1.
Guedes Soares (2004) using the linear filtering method (Xu et al., 2004).

Table 11
Statistical test of marginal distributions for simulated data.
Simulated data MS model Generalised Gamma Mixture lognormal

p-value Hypothesis test result p-value Hypothesis test result p-value Hypothesis test result
2 8
Ia 1.1300 � 10 reject 2.1653 � 10 reject 0.5514 accept
32 178
IIa 6.0008 � 10 reject 1.3412 � 10 reject 0.1113 accept
253 165
IIIa 1.6267 � 10 reject 2.5924 � 10 reject 0.9841 accept
37 47
Ib 1.0553 � 10 reject 1.6336 � 10 reject 0.1954 accept
78 50
IIb 9.4551 � 10 reject 6.0701 � 10 reject 0.9202 accept
301 241
IIIb 1.6866 � 10 reject 1.4869 � 10 reject 0.3081 accept
10 3
Ic 4.9236 � 10 reject 1.0000 � 10 reject 0.1118 accept
14 44
IIc 2.6756 � 10 reject 1.1075 � 10 reject 0.9201 accept
37 164
IIIc 2.9404 � 10 reject 3.0393 � 10 reject 0.7141 accept

Table 12
Gaussian copula parameter for mixture model for simulated data.
Sea states Ia IIa IIIa Ib IIb IIIb Ic IIc IIIc

Parameter 0.2317 0.3125 0.1152 0.1202 0.0316 0.0614 0.1175 0.0395 0.0794

8
W. Huang et al.
Fig. 8. Bivariate distribution of successive wave periods for simulated data using the MS model. Red line denotes the empirical distribution, while the solid line
denotes the fitted model. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
4.1. Comparison with experimental data
The secondary waves generated in the experiments equated to swell-
dominated sea states. The marginal distributions of the individual wave
periods were analysed first. The MS model, generalised Gamma distri­
bution, and mixture lognormal distribution were compared with the
histograms derived directly from the measurements, as illustrated in
Fig. 4. Table 4 lists the number of components in the mixture distribu­
tion and the corresponding BIC values. Table 5 illustrates the parameters
of the mixture model calculated by the EM algorithm. The error metrics
of these three parametric models are listed in Table 6.
It can be seen from Fig. 4 that the pattern of the swell-dominated sea
state presents bimodal characteristics owing to the superposition of
waves with short periods and small heights on long swells. This type of
wave field was well described by the mixture model, whereas the MS
model and generalised Gamma distribution were incapable of capturing
the characteristics of the mode. The generalised Gamma function
significantly underestimated both peak values of the distribution and
9
Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 242 (2020) 106860
overestimated the probability of intermediate periods. Although the MS
model could identify the various statistical features between short and
long periods, as it uses two distribution functions to fit these two sec­
tions, the later segment of the model was not able to provide satisfactory
fitness. Additionally, its performance near the intersection point was not
sufficient and caused discontinuity of the probability density function.
Compared with the MS and generalised Gamma distribution, the
mixture lognormal model provided excellent alignment with the mar­
ginal distribution of the wave period, as reflected by Table 6 and Fig. 4.
A statistical test, the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, was performed and p-
values at a significance level of 0.05 for different marginal distributions
are shown in Table 7. The results suggested that the two tests rejected
the hypothesis based on the MS model or Generalised Gamma model,
whereas accepted that based on the mixture lognormal model.
After determining the univariate distribution, the bivariate distri­
bution of consecutive wave periods was constructed using the condi­
tional modelling approach and copula method. The estimate of the
parameter for the Gaussian copula that couples two mixture
W. Huang et al.
Fig. 9. Bivariate distribution of successive wave periods for simulated data using the Wist model. Red line denotes the empirical distribution, while the solid line
denotes the fitted model. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
distributions is 0.0517. Fig. 5 (a), (b), and (c) illustrate the distributions
established by the MS model, Wist model, and mixture model, respec­
tively. In order to understand the degree of fit of the parametric models,
the experimental data was binned and contoured to generate the
empirical distributions, which are presented as red dashed lines in the
corresponding figures. The mixture model was the only one that pin­
pointed the peaks of the pattern and provided an adequate description
for the dataset, whereas the other two only detected the peak where the
wave periods were short. The conditional probability, P, versus τ ¼ (τ1*
þ τ2*)/2, which is of interest in the analysis of resonant effects, is
illustrated in Fig. 6 for further evaluation of the parametric models. The
measurements were well represented by the MS model and the mixture
model, and it appears that the MS model is immune to the inaccurate
prediction of the distribution owing to its piecewise style. The Wist
model underestimated the peak value of the conditional distribution and
was not capable of displaying the bimodal feature. Additionally, this
model overestimated the conditional probabilities of lower and inter­
mediate periods in this type of wave field, which is consistent with the
pattern in Fig. 4.
10
Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 242 (2020) 106860
4.2. Comparison with simulated data
In an effort to create a more systematic and comprehensive study,
nine classes of wave fields were simulated using the six-parameter
spectral model. The assessment of the number of components in the
mixture models was based on the BIC criteria listed in Table 8. The
computed parameters are illustrated in Table 9. The marginal distribu­
tions of these nine cases as fitted by three parametric models are illus­
trated in Fig. 7, alongside the test statistics for fitness evaluation that are
listed in Table 10. The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test was performed and p-
values at a significant level of 0.05 for different marginatl distributions
are shown in Table 11.
The shapes of the univariate distributions in swell-dominated sea
states, denoted as category-a, were quite irregular and asymmetric. The
patterns of sea states with small and intermediate ID values revealed
double characteristics, whereas the shape of category-IIIa sea states
presented three peaks. As stated by Rodríguez and Guedes Soares
(1999), the presence of more long and short periods and fewer inter­
mediate periods would be seen in sea states dominated by swell. It
W. Huang et al.
Fig. 10. Bivariate distribution of successive wave periods for simulated data using the mixture model. Red line denotes the empirical distribution, while the solid line
denotes the fitted model. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
should be noted that these increasing waves contained some with pe­
riods longer than the peak period of a wind-sea system and shorter than
the peak period of a swell system. Accordingly, if the ID values are
smaller, corresponding to category-Ia and IIa, then the periods of these
waves would be close to the peak periods of the wind-sea and swell
systems, respectively, leading to the bimodal structure shown in their
distributions. Conversely, if the values of the ID are larger, then the
periods of these increasing long waves would be shorter than the peak
period of the swell component, while those short waves would be longer
than the peak period of the wind wave component. The patterns can
exhibit three peaks under these circumstances. It can be seen from Fig. 7
(Ia), (IIa), and (IIIa) that the mixture lognormal distribution always
provides better fitness than the other two methods. The multimodal
structure was exactly replicated by the mixture distribution. The per­
formance of the MS model and generalised Gamma distribution got
worse with increasing values of the ID. These two models were adequate
for category-Ia, but neither of them could capture the shapes of the next
two cases.
The shapes of the distributions with different ID values in wind-sea
11
Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 242 (2020) 106860
dominated sea states, denoted as category-b, were similar to each
other. Owing to the reduced effect of small, long waves, the empirical
distributions were more symmetric and regular, differing greatly from
those in category-a. The MS model and generalised Gamma function
both provided a poor fit and significantly underestimated the peak
values of the distributions. In contrast, the mixture lognormal distribu­
tion provided a good representation of the data. Category-c represents
the sea-swell energy equivalent sea states, as illustrated in Fig. 7 (Ic),
(IIc), and (IIIa). The inclusion of long period waves in this type of sea
state brings more waves with larger and smaller periods and fewer
waves with intermediate periods. The MS model and mixture lognormal
distribution provided reasonable agreement with the observations,
although the latter was better. The behaviour of the generalised Gamma
distribution was similar to that of category-b and appeared to underes­
timate the peak values. The discrepancies between this model and the
measurements grew wider as the ID values increased.
Table 12 lists the Gaussian copula parameters for the mixture
models. Fig. 8, Fig. 9, and Fig. 10 illustrate the bivariate distributions of
consecutive wave periods as constructed by the MS model, Wist model,
W. Huang et al.
Fig. 11. Conditional probability of wave period given the previous wave period for simulated data.
and mixture distribution model, respectively. As mentioned above, the
probability of short periods and long periods will increase with the ID
and as the SSER decreases. This feature can be embodied in the empirical
joint distributions. That is, with the increase in ID values and the pro­
portion of the swell component, the probability of long periods suc­
ceeded by short waves and short periods succeeded by long waves
increases. Another feature observed in the joint behaviour of successive
wave periods is the increased probability of consecutive long periods in
swell-dominated sea states with large ID values, which were also re­
flected by the conditional probability of τiþ1 given τi, as illustrated in
Fig. 11. These characteristics corroborate the results of Rodrı ́guez and
Guedes Soares (2004).
The MS model was able to describe the observations of sea-swell
equivalent sea states adequately, as it performed well in the marginal
distributions. However, the agreement of the MS model could not be
considered satisfactory for the other two-wave fields, and the deviation
tended to increase with the distance between the spectral peaks. As can
be seen in Fig. 10 (IIIa) and (IIIb), the agreement of the MS model for
long periods was inadequate. The Wist model provided an accurate
description for sea-swell equivalent sea states with smaller ID values, but
was inexact for sea states with two-wave systems located in different
frequency zones as it underestimated both the probabilities of long pe­
riods succeeded by short waves and short periods succeeded by long
waves. Additionally, both of these models failed to identify the peaks in
swell-dominated sea states sufficiently. With the aid of the extraordinary
accuracy of the univariate distributions in each sea state, the mixture
model provided satisfactory fitness for all wave fields. The only draw­
back was that the probability of wave periods in the intervals of 1.5 and
2.0 was underestimated for category-IIIa.
12
Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 242 (2020) 106860
The conditional probability of the wave period given the previous
wave period illustrated in Fig. 11 was used to verify the application of
these three models to the evaluation of the safety of marine structures
and ships, which can be incited to move near resonance. The shapes of
the data in category-a present multimodal structures, which could not be
reflected by the Wist model at all. The MS model was adequate for
category-Ia but underestimated the probabilities of lower periods for
category-IIa and larger periods for category-IIIa. The characteristics of
the mode, such as the multi-peak feature, were well described by the
mixture model. The pattern of category-IIIa is a good example, as the
mixture model demonstrates the three-peak characteristic that could not
be shown by the MS and Wist models. The agreement of the mixture
model for large periods was much better than that of the MS model, but
its poorer performance for small periods as compared to the MS model
should be noted. This may be due to the fact that it uses only one
parameter to describe the dependency of the variables and, therefore,
cannot provide an accurate fit. The present model could be improved if
the copula function could be incorporated into the mixture model (i.e.
the construction of a mixture bivariate distribution model). It should be
noted that conditional probability ranging up to approximately 0.2 is
considered a significant probability of encountering synchronous waves
in a sea state. When synchronism combines with high waves, conditions
become more dangerous (Myrhaug and Slaattelid, 1999). Category-IIIa
meets the requirements according to Rodríguez and Guedes Soares
(1999), who found that a peak appeared in the joint distribution of in­
dividual wave heights and periods for large values of these two pa­
rameters. Therefore, it makes sense to describe the distribution of
consecutive long waves accurately. The modes of category-b and
category-c were more regular than category-a. The Wist model remained
W. Huang et al.
a poor fit, and continued to underestimate the peak values in all situa­
tions. The MS model provided a reasonable fit for category-c but
underestimated the probability of intermediate periods for wind-sea
dominated sea states with larger ID values. As always, the mixture
model provided a good representation and was a steady performer.
5. Conclusions
This study investigated the statistical properties of individual suc­
cessive wave periods in combined sea states by establishing marginal
distributions and bivariate distributions using parametric models. Lab­
oratory experiments were set up to generate secondary waves. The MS
model, Wist model, and mixture model were compared, using data from
experiments and numerical simulations. Nine categories of combined
sea states as defined by SSER and ID were analysed for a comprehensive
study.
The generalised Gamma distribution could only be used to predict
the marginal distribution in swell-dominated and sea-swell energy
equivalent sea states with small ID values. The MS model provided an
accurate representation for mixed wind-sea and swell sea states with
comparable energy, but its performance was much poorer in the other
two cases. The best fit to the data, in all types of combined sea states, was
given by the mixture lognormal distribution, which always yielded
satisfactory agreement and was able to characterise the patterns, such as
the multimodal structure, sufficiently.
Based on the marginal distributions, the bivariate distributions were
constructed using the conditional modelling method and Gaussian
copula. The Wist model was inadequate in almost all cases. In particular,
for consecutive long periods, the Wist model always underestimated the
probability of the empirical distributions. The MS model provided
extremely good agreement for category-c. Nevertheless, this model was
unsuitable for wind-sea dominated and swell-dominated sea states. The
fitness worsened as the values of the ID increased. The satisfactory de­
scriptions of the marginal distribution obtained by the mixture model
provided an excellent outcome for the bivariate distribution. The
mixture model was capable of satisfactorily describing the patterns of
successive wave periods.
The conditional probability of the wave period extending over an
interval [τ1*, τ2*] given that the previous wave period extended over the
same interval was used to identify which parametric models were more
suitable for evaluation of the resonant effect on ships or structures. The
Wist model failed to capture the shapes of the distributions. Conversely,
the MS and mixture models yielded better agreement. However, the MS
model could not be considered satisfactory for intermediate and large ID
values in swell-dominated sea states. In this regard, the mixture model
was capable of describing the multimodal characteristics of the patterns.
Nevertheless, the present model underestimated the peaks of the con­
ditional probabilities for category-a. An improved model involving the
mixture bivariate distribution will be investigated in a future study.
Knowledge of the bivariate distribution of successive wave periods is
very important in ocean and coastal engineering applications. Their
joint behaviour has been applied to the analysis of resonant oscillations
of marine structures and ships (Myrhaug et al., 1995, 2000; Myrhaug
and Slaattelid, 1999). The mixture model is recommended to describe
the patterns in combined sea states. When attention is focused on the
conditional probability of a wave period given by the previous period,
such as in the study of resonant oscillations, the MS model is also
adequate except for in swell-dominated sea states with larger ID values.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
13
Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 242 (2020) 106860
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Weinan Huang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Vali­
dation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation,
Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization. Xinyu
Han: Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing - original draft. Sheng
Dong: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Resources,
Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Project
administration, Funding acquisition.
Acknowledgements
The study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation
of China-Shandong Joint Fund Project (U1706226) and the National
Natural Science Foundation of China (51779236).
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