Symmetries and exact solutions of the shallow water equations for a two-dimensional shear flow

Abstract

This paper considers nonlinear equations describing the propagation of long waves in two-dimensional shear flow of a heavy ideal incompressible fluid with a free boundary. A nine-dimensional group of transformations admitted by the equations of motion is found by symmetry methods. Two-dimensional subgroups are used to find simpler integrodifferential submodels which define classes of exact solutions, some of which are integrated. New steady-state and unsteady rotationally symmetric solutions with a nontrivial velocity distribution along the depth are obtained.