  The reflection of internal gravity waves at sloping boundaries leads to
focusing or defocusing. In closed domains, focusing typically dominates and
projects the wave energy onto 'wave attractors'. For small-amplitude internal
waves, the projection of energy onto higher wave numbers by geometric focusing
can be balanced by viscous dissipation at high wave numbers. Contrary to what
was previously suggested, viscous dissipation in interior shear layers may not
be sufficient to explain the experiments on wave attractors in the classical
quasi-2D trapezoidal laboratory set-ups. Applying standard boundary layer
theory, we provide an elaborate description of the viscous dissipation in the
interior shear layer, as well as at the rigid boundaries. Our analysis shows
that even if the thin lateral Stokes boundary layers consist of no more than 1%
of the wall-to-wall distance, dissipation by lateral walls dominates at
intermediate wave numbers. Our extended model for the spectrum of 3D wave
attractors in equilibrium closes the gap between observations and theory by
Hazewinkel et al. (2008).
