A surface gravity wave breaks when its smooth free-surface motion becomes unstable and overturns or forms a strongly dissipative front. In the nondispersive shallow-water approximation, intersecting compressive characteristic curves signal failure of a smooth simple wave; a hydraulic bore replaces it at the integral-model level. Dispersion can instead produce an oscillatory bore, while physical breaking involves turbulence and energy loss beyond the inviscid equations.
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