A nonlinear evolution equation correct to fourth order is developed for gravity-capillary waves on linear shear currents in finite water depth. Therefore, this equation covers both effects of depth uniform currents and uniform vorticity. Starting from this equation, an instability analysis is then made for narrow banded uniform Stokes waves. The notable feature is that our investigation due to fourth order shows a remarkable improvement compared with the third-order one, and produces an excellent result compatible with the exact result of Longuet-Higgins. We observe that linear shear currents considerably change the modulational instability properties of capillary-gravity waves, such as the growth rate and bandwidth of instability.

We derive a nonlinear Schrödinger equation for the propagation of the three-dimensional broader bandwidth gravity-capillary waves including the effect of depth-uniform current. In this derivation, the restriction of narrow bandwidth constraint is extended, so that this equation will be more appropriate for application to a realistic sea wave spectrum. From this equation, an instability condition is obtained and then instability regions in the perturbed wavenumber space for a uniform wave train are drawn, which are in good agreement with the exact numerical results. As it turns out, the corrections to the stability properties that occur at the fourth-order term arise from an interaction between the mean flow and the frequency-dispersion term. Since the frequency-dispersion term, in the absence of depth-uniform current, for pure capillary waves is of opposite sign for pure gravity waves, so too are the corrections to the instability properties.

A classical problem in free-surface hydrodynamics concerns flow in a channel, when an obstacle is placed on the bottom. Steady-state flows exist and may adopt one of three possible configurations, depending on the fluid speed and the obstacle height; perhaps the best known has an apparently uniform flow upstream of the obstacle, followed by a semiinfinite train of downstream gravity waves. When time-dependent behaviour is taken into account, it is found that conditions upstream of the obstacle are more complicated, however, and can include a train of upstream-advancing solitons. This paper gives a critical overview of these concepts, and also presents a new semianalytical spectral method for the numerical description of unsteady behaviour.

In this paper, we study the existence and concentration behaviour of multi-peak standing waves for a singularly perturbed Davey–Stewartson system, which arises in the theory of shallow water waves. For this purpose, we first give a sharp threshold of the existence of ground-state solutions to the related limiting problem. Next, combining the penalization method and the regularity theory of elliptic equations, we construct a family of positive solutions concentrating around any prescribed finite set of local minima, possibly degenerate, of the potential. A feature of this analysis is that we do not need any uniqueness or non-degeneracy conditions for the limiting equation. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first study dealing with the study of concentrating solutions for Davey–Stewartson systems. We emphasize that with respect to the classical Schrödinger equation, the presence of a singular integral operator in the Davey–Stewartson system forces the implementation of new ideas to obtain the existence of multi-peak solutions.

The purpose of this paper is to present an extension of the results in [8]. We establish a more general proof for the moving kernel formula to prove the spectral stability of periodic traveling wave solutions for the regularized Benjamin–Bona–Mahony type equations. As applications of our analysis, we show the spectral instability for the quintic Benjamin–Bona–Mahony equation and the spectral (orbital) stability for the regularized Benjamin–Ono equation.

This paper is devoted to the study of the long wave approximation for water waves under the influence of the gravity and a Coriolis forcing. We start by deriving a generalization of the Boussinesq equations in one (spatial) dimension and we rigorously justify them as an asymptotic model of water wave equations. These new Boussinesq equations are not the classical Boussinesq equations: a new term due to the vorticity and the Coriolis forcing appears that cannot be neglected. We study the Boussinesq regime and derive and fully justify different asymptotic models when the bottom is flat: a linear equation linked to the Klein–Gordon equation admitting the so-called Poincaré waves; the Ostrovsky equation, which is a generalization of the Korteweg–de Vries (KdV) equation in the presence of a Coriolis forcing, when the rotation is weak; and the KdV equation when the rotation is very weak. Therefore, this work provides the first mathematical justification of the Ostrovsky equation. Finally, we derive a generalization of the Green–Naghdi equations in one spatial dimension for small topography variations and we show that this model is consistent with the water wave equations.

This paper concerns the computation of nonlinear crest distributions for irregular Stokes waves, and a numerical algorithm based on the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) technique has been developed for carrying out the nonlinear computations. In order to further improve the computational efficiency, a new Transformed Rayleigh procedure is first proposed as another alternative for computing the nonlinear wave crest height distributions, and the corresponding computer code has also been developed. In the proposed Transformed Rayleigh procedure, the transformation model is chosen to be a monotonic exponential function, calibrated such that the first three moments of the transformed model match the moments of the true process. The numerical algorithm based on the FFT technique and the proposed Transformed Rayleigh procedure have been applied for calculating the wave crest distributions of a sea state with a Bretschneider spectrum and a sea statewith the surface elevation datameasured at the Poseidon platform. It is demonstrated in these two cases that the numerical algorithm based on the FFT technique and the proposed Transformed Rayleigh procedure can offer better predictions than those from using the empirical wave crest distribution models. Meanwhile, it is found that our proposed Transformed Rayleigh procedure can compute nonlinear crest distributions more than 25 times faster than the numerical algorithm based on the FFT technique.

We present a conservative formulation and a numerical algorithm for the reduced-gravity shallow-water equations on a beta plane, subjected to a constant wind forcing that leads to the formation of double-gyre circulation in a closed ocean basin. The novelty of the paper is that we reformulate the governing equations into a nonlinear hyperbolic conservation law plus source terms. A second-order fractional-step algorithm is used to solve the reformulated equations. In the first step of the fractional-step algorithm, we solve the homogeneous hyperbolic shallow-water equations by the wave-propagation finite volume method. The resulting intermediate solution is then used as the initial condition for the initial-boundary value problem in the second step. As a result, the proposed method is not sensitive to the choice of viscosity and gives high-resolution results for coarse grids, as long as the Rossby deformation radius is resolved. We discuss the boundary conditions in each step, when no-slip boundary conditions are imposed to the problem. We validate the algorithm by a periodic flow on an f-plane with exact solutions. The order-of-accuracy for the proposed algorithm is tested numerically. We illustrate a quasi-steady-state solution of the double-gyre model via the height anomaly and the contour of stream function for the formation of double-gyre circulation in a closed basin. Our calculations are highly consistent with the results reported in the literature. Finally, we present an application, in which the double-gyre model is coupled with the advection equation for modeling transport of a pollutant in a closed ocean basin.

The problem of oblique wave scattering by a rectangular submarine trench is investigated assuming a linearized theory of water waves. Due to the geometrical symmetry of the rectangular trench about the central line $x=0$, the boundary value problem is split into two separate problems involving the symmetric and antisymmetric potential functions. A multi-term Galerkin approximation involving ultra-spherical Gegenbauer polynomials is employed to solve the first-kind integral equations arising in the mathematical analysis of the problem. The reflection and transmission coefficients are computed numerically for various values of different parameters and different angles of incidence of the wave train. The coefficients are depicted graphically against the wave number for different situations. Some curves for these coefficients available in the literature and obtained by different methods are recovered.

In this paper, coupled systems

of Korteweg-de Vries type are considered, where u = u(x, t), v = v(x, t) are real-valued functions and where x, t∈R. Here, subscripts connote partial differentiation and

are quadratic polynomials in the variables u and v. Attention is given to the pure initial-value problem in which u(x, t) and v(x, t) are both specified at t = 0, namely,

for x ∈ ℝ. Under suitable conditions on P and Q, global well-posedness of this problem is established for initial data in the L2-based Sobolev spaces Hs(ℝ) × Hs(ℝ) for any s > ‒3/4.

We present new large time step methods for the shallow water flows in the low Froude number limit. In order to take into account multiscale phenomena that typically appear in geophysical flows nonlinear fluxes are split into a linear part governing the gravitational waves and the nonlinear advection. We propose to approximate fast linear waves implicitly in time and in space by means of a genuinely multidimensional evolution operator. On the other hand, we approximate nonlinear advection part explicitly in time and in space by means of the method of characteristics or some standard numerical flux function. Time integration is realized by the implicit-explicit (IMEX) method. We apply the IMEX Euler scheme, two step Runge Kutta Cranck Nicolson scheme, as well as the semi-implicit BDF scheme and prove their asymptotic preserving property in the low Froude number limit. Numerical experiments demonstrate stability, accuracy and robustness of these new large time step finite volume schemes with respect to small Froude number.

Problems of wave interaction with a body with arbitrary shape floating or submerged in water are of immense importance in the literature on the linearized theory of water waves. Wave-free potentials are used to construct solutions to these problems involving bodies with circular geometry, such as a submerged or half-immersed long horizontal circular cylinder (in two dimensions) or sphere (in three dimensions). These are singular solutions of Laplace’s equation satisfying the free surface condition and decaying rapidly away from the point of singularity. Wave-free potentials in two and three dimensions for infinitely deep water as well as water of uniform finite depth with a free surface are known in the literature. The method of constructing wave-free potentials in three dimensions is presented here in a systematic manner, neglecting or taking into account the effect of surface tension at the free surface or for water with an ice cover modelled as a thin elastic plate floating on the water. The forms of the wave motion at the upper surface (free surface or ice-covered surface) related to these wave-free potentials are depicted graphically in a number of figures for all the cases considered.

Internal waves arise in a wide array of oceanographic problems of both theoretical and engineering interest. In this contribution we present a new model, valid in the weakly nonlinear regime, for the propagation of disturbances along the interface between two ideal fluid layers of infinite extent and different densities. Additionally, we present a novel high-order/spectral algorithm for its accurate and stable simulation. Numerical validation results and simulations of wave-packet evolution are provided.

We consider the linearization of the three-dimensional water waves equation with surface tension about a flat interface. Using oscillatory integral methods, we prove that solutions of this equation demonstrate dispersive decay at the somewhat surprising rate of ${{t}^{-5/6}}$. This rate is due to competition between surface tension and gravitation at $O(1)$ wave numbers and is connected to the fact that, in the presence of surface tension, there is a so-called “slowest wave”. Additionally, we combine our dispersive estimates with ${{L}^{2}}$ type energy bounds to prove a family of Strichartz estimates.

We present a new Finite Volume Evolution Galerkin (FVEG) scheme for the solution of the shallow water equations (SWE) with the bottom topography as a source term. Our new scheme will be based on the FVEG methods presented in (Noelle and Kraft, J. Comp. Phys., 221 (2007)), but adds the possibility to handle dry boundaries. The most important aspect is to preserve the positivity of the water height. We present a general approach to ensure this for arbitrary finite volume schemes. The main idea is to limit the outgoing fluxes of a cell whenever they would create negative water height. Physically, this corresponds to the absence of fluxes in the presence of vacuum. Wellbalancing is then re-established by splitting gravitational and gravity driven parts of the flux. Moreover, a new entropy fix is introduced that improves the reproduction of sonic rarefaction waves.

The accuracy and efficiency of a class of finite volume methods are investigated for numerical solution of morphodynamic problems in one space dimension. The governing equations consist of two components, namely a hydraulic part described by the shallow water equations and a sediment part described by the Exner equation. Based on different formulations of the morphodynamic equations, we propose a family of three finite volume methods. The numerical fluxes are reconstructed using a modified Roe’s scheme that incorporates, in its reconstruction, the sign of the Jacobian matrix in the morphodynamic system. A well-balanced discretization is used for the treatment of the source terms. The method is well-balanced, non-oscillatory and suitable for both slow and rapid interactions between hydraulic flow and sediment transport. The obtained results for several morphodynamic problems are considered to be representative, and might be helpful for a fair rating of finite volume solution schemes, particularly in long time computations.

The stochastic Lagrange wave model is a realistic alternative to the Gaussian linear wave model, which has been successfully used in ocean engineering for more than half a century. In this paper we present the slope distributions and other characteristic distributions at level crossings for asymmetric Lagrange time waves, i.e. what can be observed at a fixed measuring station, thereby extending results previously given for space waves. The distributions are given as expectations in a multivariate normal distribution, and they have to be evaluated by simulation or numerical integration. Interesting characteristic variables are the slope in time, the slope in space, and the vertical particle velocity when the waves are observed close to instances when the water level crosses a predetermined level. The theory has been made possible by recent generalizations of Rice's formula for the expected number of marked crossings in random fields.