Weakly nonlinear wave motions in a thermally stratified boundary layer

Abstract

A third-order KdV solution to the internal solitary wave is derived by a new method based on the weakly nonlinear assumptions in a rigid-lid two-layer system. The solution corrects an error by Mirie and Su (1984). A two-dimensional numerical wave tank has been established with the help of the open source CFD library OpenFOAM and the third-party software waves2Foam. Various analytical solutions, including the first-order to third-order KdV solutions, the eKdV solution and the MCC solution, have been used to initialise the flow fields in the CFD simulations of internal solitary waves. Two groups including 11 numerical cases have been carried out. In the same group, the initial wave amplitudes are the same but the implemented analytical solutions are different. The simulated wave profiles at different moments have been presented. The relative errors in terms of the wave amplitude between the last time step and the initial input have been analysed quantitatively. It is found that the third-order KdV solution results in the most stable internal solitary wave in the numerical wave tank for both small-amplitude and finite-amplitude cases. The finding is significant for the further simulations involving internal solitary waves.