Highly nonlinear standing water waves with small capillary effect

Abstract

We calculate spatially and temporally periodic standing waves using a spectral boundary integral method combined with Newton iteration. When surface tension is neglected, the non-monotonic behaviour of global wave properties agrees with previous computations by Mercer & Roberts (1992). New accurate results near the limiting form of gravity waves are obtained by using a non-uniform node distribution. It is shown that the crest angle is smaller than 90° at the largest calculated crest curvature. When a small amount of surface tension is included, the crest form is changed significantly. It is necessary to include surface tension to numerically reproduce the steep standing waves in Taylor's (1953) experiments. Faraday-wave experiments in a large-aspect-ratio rectangular container agree with our computations. This is the first time such high-amplitude, periodic waves appear to have been observed in laboratory conditions. Ripple formation and temporal symmetry breaking in the experiments are discussed.