NONLINEAR OBLIQUE INTERACTION OF LARGE AMPLITUDE INTERNAL SOLITARY WAVES

Abstract

Solitary waves are typical nonlinear long waves in the ocean. The two-dimensional interaction of solitary waves has been shown to be essentially different from the one-dimensional case and can be related to generation of large amplitude waves (including 'freak waves'). Concerning surface-water waves, Miles (1977) theoretically analyzed interaction of three solitary waves, which is called "resonant interaction† because of the relation among parameters of each wave. Weakly-nonlinear numerical study (Funakoshi, 1980) and fully-nonlinear one (Tanaka, 1993) both clarified the formation of large amplitude wave due to the interaction ("stem† wave) at the wall and its dependency of incident angle. For the case of internal waves, analyses using weakly nonlinear model equation (ex. Tsuji and Oikawa, 2006) suggest also qualitatively similar result. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the strongly nonlinear interaction of internal solitary waves; especially whether the resonant behavior is found or not. As a result, it is found that the amplified internal wave amplitude becomes about three times as much as the original amplitude. In contrast, a "stem" was not found to occur when the incident wave angle was more than the critical angle, which has been demonstrated in the previous studies.