Lévy statistics of water wave forces

A newly developed technique for determining the statistical properties of random forces with long-range and long-time correlations is applied to the loading of ships and platforms by wind-generated water waves. Using empirical spectra for the vertical displacement of the sea surface we find that the random forces produced by the surface wave field in high sea states are Lévy stable rather than Gaussian. These Lévy statistics imply a shorter survival time for ships and platforms than had been previously estimated using Gaussian statistics