English

Multiple resonances of a moving, oscillating surface disturbance on a shear current

Fluid Dynamics 2017-08-02 v1

Abstract

We consider waves radiated by a disturbance of oscillating strength moving at constant velocity along the free surface of a shear flow which, when undisturbed, has uniform horizontal vorticity of magnitude SS. When no current is present the problem is a classical one and much studied, and in deep water a resonance is known to occur when τ=Vω0/g\tau=|\boldsymbol{V}|\omega_0/g equals the critical value 1/41/4 (V\boldsymbol{V}: velocity of disturbance, ω0\omega_0: oscillation frequency, gg: gravitational acceleration). We show that the presence of the sub-surface shear current can change this picture radically. Not only does the resonant value of τ\tau depend strongly on the angle between V\boldsymbol{V} and the current's direction and the "shear-Froude number" Frs=VS/g\mathrm{Frs}=|\boldsymbol{V}|S/g; when Frs>1/3\mathrm{Frs}>1/3, multiple resonant values --- as many as 44 --- can occur for some directions of motion. At sufficiently large values of Frs\mathrm{Frs}, the smallest resonance frequency tends to zero, representing the phenomenon of critical velocity for ship waves. We provide a detailed analysis of the dispersion relation for the moving, oscillating disturbance, in both finite and infinite water depth, including for the latter case an overview of the different far-field waves which exist in different sectors of wave vector space under different conditions. Owing to the large number of parameters, a detailed discussion of the structure of resonances is provided for infinite depth only, where analytical results are available.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1609.03342,
  title  = {Multiple resonances of a moving, oscillating surface disturbance on a shear current},
  author = {Yan Li and Simen Å. Ellingsen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.03342},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

21 pages, 12 figures, submitted to J. Fluid Mech