Oblique surface wave propagation over a small undulation on the bottom of an ocean

Abstract

The problem of oblique water wave diffraction by small undulation of the bottom of a laterally unbounded ocean is considered using linear water wave theory. A perturbation analysis is employed to obtain the velocity potential, the reflection and the transmission coefficients up to the first order in terms of integrals involving the shape functions c(x) representing the bottom undulation. Finite cosine transform is used to find the first order potential, and this potential is utilised in obtaining the first order reflection and transmission coefficients. Some particular forms of the shape function representing an exponentially damped undulation, a single hump and a patch of sinusoidal ripples are considered and the integrals for the reflection and transmission coefficients are evaluated. For the exponentially damped undulation, it is observed that the reflection ceases much before transmission while for the single hump, reflection and transmission go hand in hand up to a certain value of the wavenumber, after which they vanish. For the patch of sinusoidal ripples having the same wavenumber, the reflection coefficient up to the first order is found to be an oscillatory function in the quotient of twice the component of the wavenumber along x-axis and the ripple wavenumber. When this quotient becomes one, the theory predicts a resonant interaction between the bed and free surface, and the reflection coefficient becomes a multiple of the number of ripples. High reflection of the incident wave energy occurs if this number is large. Also, when a patch of ripples having different wavenumbers is considered the same result follows. Known results for the normal incidence are recovered as special cases for the patch of sinusoidal ripples. The theoretical observations are shown computationally.