Steady solution of solitary wave and linear shear current interaction

Abstract

• Solitary wave in the presence of a linear shear background current is studied. • The wave profile, wave speed, velocity field are studied. • The horizontal velocity under the wave crest is presented. The steady solution of a solitary wave propagating in the presence of a linear shear background current is investigated by the Green–Naghdi (GN) equations. The steady solution is obtained by use of the Newton–Raphson method. Three aspects are investigated; they are the wave speed, wave profile and velocity field. The converged GN results are compared with results from the literature. It is found that for the opposing-current case of the solitary wave with a small amplitude, the results of the GN equations match results from the literature well, while for the solitary wave with a large amplitude, results from the literature are seen to be not as accurate. In the following-current case, though the amplitude of the solitary wave is small, the GN results are shown to be accurate. The velocity along the water column at the wave crest and the velocity field for different cases are calculated by the GN equations. The results of the GN equations show obvious differences when compared with the results obtained by superposing the no-current results and linear shear current linearly. We find that for the same current strength, the vortex is stronger for the steep solitary-wave case than that for the small solitary-wave case.