The present work aims to investigate the free surface wave system of a volume source translating in a stratified fluid. In this paper, a modified model is established with linearized governing equations and the free surface condition. This modified model can describe both the internal and surface waves excited by a volume source with arbitrary density profiles. The wave characteristics that are analyzed include the half-wedge angle, crestlines, the maximum amplitude, and the apparent angle. The results show that the entire wave system is complex and composed by an infinite number of single wave modes. The different modes can be divided into surface modes (mode number n = 0) and internal modes (n ≥ 1). It is found that internal modes have many similarities to each other but are quite different from surface modes. In the subcritical area [Fr<Frn, where the Froude number is Fr=U/gL and the critical Froude number of mode n is Frn=cpn(0)/gL], the wave structure of the nth mode contains divergent and transverse waves, and the half-wedge angle of surface mode waves increases from the Kelvin-wave angle of 19°28′ to 90°, while the half-wedge angle of internal mode waves increases from 0° to 90°. In the supercritical domain (Fr ≥ Frn), there are only divergent waves, and the half-wedge angle of all mode waves decays as sin−1(Frn/Fr). The amplitude of waves is related to the velocity of the source, the location of the source, the depth of the fluid, the Brunt–Väisälä frequency, the thickness of the pycnocline, and the center location of the pycnocline. The effects of these factors have been discussed in this paper. The apparent angle, which indicates the highest peak of waves, is also discussed. The results show that the apparent angle of all mode waves scales like Fr−1 at large Froude numbers.
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