Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © The Author, 2007. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of American Institute of Physics for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Physics of Fluids 19 (2007): 026601, doi:10.1063/1.2472509.
Description:
The effect of rotation on the propagation of internal solitary waves is examined. Wave evolution
is followed using a new rotating extension of a fully-nonlinear, weakly nonhydrostatic theory for
waves in a two-layer system. When a solitary wave solution of the non-rotating equations is used
as the initial condition the wave initially decays by radiation of longer inertia-gravity waves. The
radiated inertia-gravity wave always steepens, leading to the formation a secondary solitary-like
wave. This decay and re-emergence process then repeats. Eventually a nearly localized wavepacket
emerges. It consists of a longwave envelope and shorter, faster solitary-like waves that propagate
through the envelope. The radiation from this mature state is very weak, leading to a robust,
long-lived structure that may contain as much as 50% of the energy in the initial solitary wave.
Interacting packets may either pass through one another, or merge to form a longer packet. The
packets appear to be modulated, fully-nonlinear versions of the steadily translating quasi-cnoidal
waves.
Description:
This work was supported by a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Mellon Independent
Study Award and ONR Grant N000140610798.
Keywords:
Nonlinear internal waves
;
Solitary waves
;
Rotation
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
Format:
application/pdf
