This paper describes an experimental study of two-dimensional surface water waves propagating on a depth-varying current with a non-uniform vorticity distribution. The investigation is divided into two parts. The first concerns the ‘equilibrium’ conditions in which the oscillatory wave motion and the current co-exist. Measurements of the water-surface elevation, the water-particle kinematics, and the near-bed pressure fluctuations are compared to a number of wave and wave–current solutions including a nonlinear model capable of incorporating the vertical structure of the current profile. These comparisons confirm that the near-surface vorticity leads to an important modification of the dispersion equation, and thus affects the nature of the wave-induced orbital motion over the entire water depth. However, the inclusion of vorticity-dependent terms within the dispersion equation is not sufficient to define the combined wave–current flow. The present results suggest that vorticity may lead to a significant change in the water-surface profile. If a current is positively sheared, dU/dz > 0, with negative vorticity at the water surface, as would be the case in a wind-driven current, a wave propagating in the same direction as the current will experience increased crest–trough asymmetry due to the vorticity distribution. With higher and sharper wave crests there is a corresponding increase in both the maximum water-particle accelerations and the maximum horizontal water-particle velocities. These results are consistent with previous theoretical calculations involving uniform vorticity distributions (Simmen & Saffman 1985 and Teles da Silva & Peregrine 1988).The second part of the study addresses the ‘gradually varying’ problem in which there are changes in the current, the wavelength and the wave height due to the initial interaction between the wave and the current. These data show that there is a large and non-uniform change in the current profile that is dependent upon both the steepness of the waves and the vorticity distribution. Furthermore, comparisons between the measured wave height change and a number of solutions based on the conservation of wave action, confirm that the vorticity distribution plays a dominant role. In the absence of a conservation equation for wave action appropriate for nonlinear waves on a depth-varying current, an alternative approach based on the conservation of total energy flux, first proposed by Longuet-Higgins & Stewart (1960), is shown to be in good agreement with the measured data.

This paper considers the description of a two dimensional wave train propagating on an arbitrary current. The bi-linear numerical model, first proposed by Dalrymple (1974), has been extended to incorporate a five layered description of the flow field. This model allows an accurate representation of a strongly sheared current, and at the same time minimises the discontinui ty in the vorticity profile. A variety of wavecurrent combinations are investigated, and it is shown that the time-averaged vorticity profile is an important parameter in determining the non-linearity of the wave form.In particular, the presence of a strongly sheared current at the water surface is shown to produce a significant increase in both the crest elevation and the wave induced velocity field. These changes cannot be predicted by a simple Doppler shifted solution based on an "equivalent" uniform current.