Towards eliminating the nonlinear Kelvin wake
Abstract
The nonlinear disturbance caused by a localised forcing moving at constant speed on the free surface of a liquid of finite depth is investigated using the forced Kadometsev-Petviashvili equation. The presence of a steady v-shaped Kelvin wave pattern downstream of the forcing is established for this model equation, and the wedge angle is characterised as a function of the Froude number. Inspired by this analysis, it is shown that the wake can be eliminated via a careful choice of the forcing distribution and that, significantly, the corresponding nonlinear wave-free solution is stable so that it could potentially be seen in a physical experiment. The stability is demonstrated via the numerical solution of an initial value problem for which the steady wave-free state is attained in the long-time limit.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2410.01255,
title = {Towards eliminating the nonlinear Kelvin wake},
author = {Jack Keeler and Benjamin Binder and Mark Blyth},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.01255},
year = {2024}
}