Traveling wave solutions to the free boundary Navier-Stokes equations

Abstract

Consider a layer of viscous incompressible fluid bounded below by a flat rigid boundary and above by a moving boundary. The fluid is subject to gravity, surface tension, and an external stress that is stationary when viewed in a coordinate system moving at a constant velocity parallel to the lower boundary. The latter can model, for instance, a tube blowing air on the fluid while translating across the surface. In this talk we will detail the construction of traveling wave solutions to this problem, which are themselves stationary in the same translating coordinate system. While such traveling wave solutions to the Euler equations are well-known, to the best of our knowledge this is the first construction of such solutions with viscosity. This is joint work with Giovanni Leoni.