On the fall of a heavy rigid body in an ideal fluid

Abstract

We consider a problem about the motion of a heavy rigid body in an unbounded volume of an ideal irrotational incompressible fluid. This problem generalizes a classical Kirchhoff problem describing the inertial motion of a rigid body in a fluid. We study different special statements of the problem: the plane motion and the motion of an axially symmetric body. In the general case of motion of a rigid body, we study the stability of partial solutions and point out limiting behaviors of the motion when the time increases infinitely. Using numerical computations on the plane of initial conditions, we construct domains corresponding to different types of the asymptotic behavior. We establish the fractal nature of the boundary separating these domains.