Compressible ocean waves generated by sudden seabed rise near a step-type topography

Abstract

A typical tsunami generation occurs through submarine earthquakes leading to large volume displacement. The corresponding mathematical problem involves modeling surface water waves generated by an arbitrary temporal motion of the ocean floor. The propagation of tsunami wave and the subsequent scattering from a sudden drop in bathymetry away from the ground motion is studied following linearized water wave theory and a weakly compressible ocean, including static oceanic background compression. The Fourier transformation and eigenfunction expansion techniques are employed to find the surface displacement and pressure profiles by leveraging appropriate matching conditions between regions of different depths. A novel energy balance relationship is derived by considering both the pure-gravity and acoustic-gravity modes. The model is validated in the limit that the depth difference approaches zero, showing a vanishing reflection contribution from the depth change. An efficient numerical code is developed that accurately captures the contribution of the cutoff frequencies of acoustic-gravity modes. Apart from the time-domain propagation of tsunami waves away from the origin, standing wave formations are observed within the shallow region, supported by significantly large pressure fluctuations in time. These standing waves or, equivalently, the pressure fluctuations sustain longer for larger ocean depth. The increase in tsunami speed in the deeper region is readily visible in the time-domain simulations. A three-dimensional axisymmetric solution is also developed, and results show a more gradual sloping tsunami wavefront compared to the equivalent two-dimensional solution for shallower depths. Animation movies corresponding to the two- and three-dimensional surface profiles are provided for better visualization.