We regard the Cauchy problem for a particular Whitham-Boussinesq system modelling surface waves of an inviscid incompressible fluid layer. We are interested in well-posedness at a very low level of regularity. We derive dispersive and Strichartz estimates, and implement them together with a fixed point argument to solve the problem locally. Hamiltonian conservation guarantees global well-posedness for small initial data in the one dimensional settings.
The initial-value problem for a particular bidirectional Whitham system modelling surface water waves is under consideration. This system was recently introduced in [4]. It is numerically shown to be stable and a good approximation to the incompressible Euler equations. Here we prove local in time well-posedness. Our proof relies on an energy method and a compactness argument.
In this note we study solitary wave solutions of a class of Whitham-Boussinesq systems which includes the bi-directional Whitham system as a special example. The travelling wave version of the evolution system can be reduced to a single evolution equation, similar to a class of equations studied by Ehrnström, Groves and Wahlén. In that paper the authors prove the existence of solitary wave solutions using a constrained minimization argument adapted to noncoercive functionals, developed by Buffoni, Groves and Wahlén, together with the concentration-compactness principle.
We are interested in the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV), the Burgers, and the Whitham limit for a spatially periodic Boussinesq model with non-small contrast. We prove estimates between the KdV, the Burgers, and the Whitham approximation and true solutions of the original system which guarantee that these amplitude equations make correct predictions about the dynamics of the spatially periodic Boussinesq model over the natural time scales of the amplitude equations. The proof is based on Bloch wave analysis and energy estimates. The result is the first justification result of the KdV, the Burgers, an…
In this paper we prove the validity of a long wave Whitham approximation for a system consisting of a Boussinesq equation coupled with a Klein-Gordon equation. The proof is based on an infinite series of normal form transformations and an energy estimate. We expect that the concepts of this paper will be a part of a general approximation theory for Whitham's equations which are especially used in the description of slow modulations in time and space of periodic wave trains in general dispersive wave systems.
We analyze the spectral stability of small-amplitude, periodic, traveling-wave solutions of a Boussinesq-Whitham system. These solutions are shown numerically to exhibit high-frequency instabilities when subject to bounded perturbations on the real line. We use a formal perturbation method to estimate the asymptotic behavior of these instabilities in the small-amplitude regime. We compare these asymptotic results with direct numerical computations. This is the second paper in a series of three that investigates high-frequency instabilities of Stokes waves.
We regard the Cauchy problem for a particular Whitham-Boussinesq system modelling surface waves of an inviscid incompressible fluid layer. The system can be seen as a weak nonlocal dispersive perturbation of the shallow water system. The proof of well-posedness relies on energy estimates. However, due to the symmetry lack of the nonlinear part, in order to close the a priori estimates one has to modify the traditional energy norm in use. Hamiltonian conservation provides with global well-posedness at least for small initial data in the one dimensional settings.
This paper is concerned with a two dimensional Whitham-Boussinesq system modelling surface waves of an inviscid incompressible fluid layer. We prove that the associated Cauchy problem is well-posed for initial data of low regularity, with existence time of scale $\mathcal O(1/\sqrtε)$, where $ε>0$ is a shallowness parameter measuring the ratio of the amplitude of the wave to the mean depth of the fluid. The key ingredients in the proof are frequency loacalised dispersive and Strichartz estimates that depend on $ε$ as well as bilinear estimates in some Strichartz norms.
The travelling wave problem for a particular bidirectional Whitham system modelling surface water waves is under consideration. This system firstly appeared in [Dinvay, Dutykh, Kalisch 2018], where it was numerically shown to be stable and a good approximation to the incompressible Euler equations. In subsequent papers [Dinvay 2018], [Dinvay, Selberg, Tesfahun 2019] the initial-value problem was studied and well-posedness in classical Sobolev spaces was proved. Here we prove existence of solitary wave solutions and provide their asymptotic description. Our proof relies on a variational approac…
Consideration is given to three different full dispersion Boussinesq systems arising as asymptotic models in the bi-directional propagation of weakly nonlinear surface waves in shallow water. We prove that, under a non-cavitation condition on the initial data, these three systems are well-posed on a time scale of order $\mathcal{O}(\frac1\varepsilon)$, where $\varepsilon$ is a small parameter measuring the weak non-linearity of the waves. This result seems new for one of these systems, even for short time. The two other systems involve surface tension, and for one of them, the non-cavitation c…
In this paper we prove a local well-posedness result for a class of quasi-linear systems of hyperbolic type involving Fourier multipliers. Among the physically relevant systems in this class is a family of Whitham-Boussinesq systems arising in the modeling free-surface water waves. Our result allows to prove the rigorous justification of these systems as approximations to the general water waves system on a relevant time scale, independent of the shallowness parameter.
We show that Whitham type equations u_t + u u_x -L u_x = 0, where L is a general Fourier multiplier operator of order α\in [-1,1], α\neq 0, allow for small solutions to be extended beyond their expected existence time. The result is valid for a range of quadratic dispersive equations with inhomogeneous symbols in the dispersive range given by α, and should be extendable to other equations of the same relative dispersive strength.
Recently, two different proofs for large and intermediate-size solitary waves of the nonlocally dispersive Whitham equation have been presented, using either global bifurcation theory or the limit of waves of large period. We give here a different approach by maximising directly the dispersive part of the energy functional, while keeping the remaining nonlinear terms fixed with an Orlicz-space constraint. This method is to our knowledge new in the setting of water waves. The constructed solutions are bell-shaped in the sense that they are even, one-sided monotone, and attain their maximum at t…
We consider the Whitham equation $u_t + 2u u_x+Lu_x = 0$, where L is the nonlocal Fourier multiplier operator given by the symbol $m(ξ) = \sqrt{\tanh ξ/ξ}$. G. B. Whitham conjectured that for this equation there would be a highest, cusped, travelling-wave solution. We find this wave as a limiting case at the end of the main bifurcation curve of $P$-periodic solutions, and give several qualitative properties of it, including its optimal $C^{1/2}$-regularity. An essential part of the proof consists in an analysis of the integral kernel corresponding to the symbol $m(ξ)$, and a following study of…
This paper is concerned with the one-dimensional version of a specific member of the (abcd) family of Boussinesq systems having the higher possible dispersion. We will establish two different long time existence results for the solutions of the Cauchy problem. The proofs involve normal form transformations suitably modified away from the zero set of the phases.
We prove a long time existence result for the solutions of a two-dimensional Boussinesq system modeling the propagation of long, weakly nonlinear water waves. This system is exceptional in the sense that it is the only linearly well-posed system in the (abcd) family of Boussinesq systems whose eigenvalues of the linearized system have nontrivial zeroes. This new difficulty is solved by the use of "good unknowns " and of normal form techniques.
We show existence of small solitary and periodic traveling-wave solutions in Sobolev spaces ${\mathrm{H}^s}$, ${ s > 0 }$, to a class of nonlinear, dispersive evolution equations of the form \begin{equation*} u_t + \left(Lu+ n(u)\right)_x = 0, \end{equation*} where the dispersion ${L}$ is a negative-order Fourier multiplier whose symbol is of KdV type at low frequencies and has integrable Fourier inverse ${ K }$ and the nonlinearity ${n}$ is inhomogeneous, locally Lipschitz and of superlinear growth at the origin. This generalises earlier work by Ehrnström, Groves & Wahlén on a class of equati…
The aim of this article is to extend previous works about the asymptotics of an ill-prepared fast rotating, highly stratified incompressible Navier-Stokes system. Thanks to improved Strichartz estimates, we are able not only to cover a case which was unanswered in our previous work (allowing bigger ill-prepared initial data) but also to reduce some assumptions on the initial data. In passing we also widen the range of some parameters and compare two methods to obtain dispersive estimates.
We review the theory of modulation equations or Whitham equations for the travelling wave solution of KdV. We then apply the Whitham modulation equations to describe the long-time asymptotics and small dispersion asymptotics of the KdV solution
In this article we prove highly improved and flexible Strichartz-type estimates allowing us to generalize the asymptotics we obtained for a stratified and rotating incompressible Navier-Stokes system: for large (and less regular) initial data, we obtain global well-posedness, asymptotics (as the Rossby number $ε$ goes to zero) and convergence rates as a power of the small parameter $ε$. Our approach is lead by the special structure of the limit system: the 3D quasi-geostrophic system.
We investigate here the interactions of waves governed by a Boussinesq system with a partially immersed body allowed to move freely in the vertical direction. We show that the whole system of equations can be reduced to a transmission problem for the Boussinesq equations with transmission conditions given in terms of the vertical displacement of the object and of the average horizontal discharge beneath it; these two quantities are in turn determined by two nonlinear ODEs with forcing terms coming from the exterior wave-field. Understanding the dispersive contribution to the added mass phenome…
In this article we study two classical linear water wave problems, i) normal modes of infinite straight channels of bounded constant cross-section, and ii) trapped longitudinal modes in domains with unbounded constant cross-section. Both problems can be stated using linearized free surface potential flow theory, and our goal is to compare known analytic solutions in the literature to numerical solutions obtained using an ad-hoc but simple approximation of the non-local Dirichlet-Neumann operator for linear waves proposed in [vargas2016whitham]. To study normal modes in channels with bounded cr…
In this note, we prove local-in-time well-posedness for a fully dispersive Boussinesq system arising in the context of free surface water waves in two and three spatial dimensions. Those systems can be seen as a weak nonlocal dispersive perturbation of the shallow-water system. Our method of proof relies on energy estimates and a compactness argument. However, due to the lack of symmetry of the nonlinear part, those traditional methods have to be supplemented with the use of a modified energy in order to close the a priori estimates.
This paper is a continuation of a previous work by two of the Authors on long time existence for Boussinesq systems modeling the propagation of long, weakly nonlinear water waves. We provide proofs on examples not considered previously in particular we prove a long time well-posedness result for a delicate "strongly dispersive" Boussinesq system.
We consider the existence of periodic traveling waves in a bidirectional Whitham equation, combining the full two-way dispersion relation from the incompressible Euler equations with a canonical shallow water nonlinearity. Of particular interest is the existence of a highest, cusped, traveling wave solution, which we obtain as a limiting case at the end of the main bifurcation branch of $2π$-periodic traveling wave solutions continuing from the zero state. Unlike the unidirectional Whitham equation, containing only one branch of the full Euler dispersion relation, where such a highest wave beh…
It is a matter of experience that nonlinear waves in dispersive media, propagating primarily in one direction, may appear periodic in small space and time scales, but their characteristics --- amplitude, phase, wave number, etc. --- slowly vary in large space and time scales. In the 1970's, Whitham developed an asymptotic (WKB) method to study the effects of small "modulations" on nonlinear periodic wave trains. Since then, there has been a great deal of work aiming at rigorously justifying the predictions from Whitham's formal theory. We discuss recent advances in the mathematical understandi…
In this work, we numerically study the higher-ordered/extended Boussinesq system describing the propagation of water-waves over flat topography. A reformulation of the same order of precision that avoids the calculation of high order derivatives on the surface deformation is proposed. We show that this formulation enjoys an extended range of applicability while remaining stable. Moreover, a significant improvement in terms of linear dispersive properties in high frequency regime is made due to the suitable adjustment of a dispersion correction parameter. We develop a second order splitting sch…
This paper is devoted to the derivation and mathematical analysis of a wave-structure interaction problem which can be reduced to a transmission problem for a Boussinesq system. Initial boundary value problems and transmission problems in dimension d= 1 for $2\times2$ hyperbolic systems are well understood. However, for many applications, and especially for the description of surface water waves, dispersive perturbations of hyperbolic systems must be considered. We consider here a configuration where the motion of the waves is governed by a Boussinesq system (a dispersive perturbation of the h…
We prove nonlinear modulational instability for both periodic and localized perturbations of periodic traveling waves for several dispersive PDEs, including the KDV type equations (e.g. the Whitham equation, the generalized KDV equation, the Benjamin-Ono equation), the nonlinear Schrödinger equation and the BBM equation. First, the semigroup estimates required for the nonlinear proof are obtained by using the Hamiltonian structures of the linearized PDEs; Second, for KDV type equations the loss of derivative in the nonlinear term is overcome in two complementary cases: (1) for smooth nonlinear…
J.-Y. Chemin proved the convergence (as the Rossby number $ε$ goes to zero) of the solutions of the Primitive Equations to the solution of the 3D quasi-geostrophic system when the Froude number F = 1 that is when no dispersive property is available. The result was proved in the particular case where the kinematic viscosity $ν$ and the thermal diffusivity $ν$ ' are close. In this article we generalize this result for any choice of the viscosities, the key idea is to rely on a special feature of the quasi-geostrophic structure.
At the core of this article is an improved, sharp dispersive estimate for the anisotropic linear semigroup $e^{R_1 t}$ arising in both the study of the dispersive SQG equation and the inviscid Boussinesq system. We combine the decay estimate with a blow-up criterion to show how dispersion leads to long-time existence of solutions to the dispersive SQG equation, improving the results obtained using hyperbolic methods. In the setting of the inviscid Boussinesq system it turns out that linearization around a specific stationary solution leads to the same linear semigroup, so that we can make use …
We study the stability of special, stratified solutions of a 3d Boussinesq system describing an incompressible, inviscid 3d fluid with variable density (or temperature, depending on the context) under the effect of a uni-directional gravitational force. The behavior is shown to depend on the properties of an anisotropic dispersive operator with weak decay in time. However, the dispersive decay also depends on the strength of the gravity in the system and on the profile of the stratified solution, whose stability we study. We show that as the strength of the dispersion in the system tends to in…
We consider a dissipative, dispersive system of Boussinesq type, describing wave phenomena in settings where dissipation has an effect. Examples include undular bores in rivers or oceans where dissipation due to turbulence is important for their description. We show that the model system admits traveling wave solutions known as diffusive-dispersive shock waves, and we categorize them into oscillatory and regularized shock waves depending on the relationship between dispersion and dissipation. Comparison of numerically computed solutions with laboratory data suggests that undular bores are accu…
We derive a $L^1_x (\mathbb R^d)-L^{\infty}_x ( \mathbb R^d)$ decay estimate of order $\mathcal O \left( t^{-d/2}\right)$ for the linear propagators $$\exp \left( {\pm it \sqrt{ |D|\left(1+ β|D|^2\right) \tanh |D | } }\right), \qquad β\in \{0, 1\}. \quad D = -i\nabla,$$ with a loss of $3d/4$ or $d/4$-derivatives in the case $β=0$ or $β=1$, respectively. These linear propagators are known to be associated with the linearized water wave equations, where the parameter $β$ measures surface tension effects. As an application we prove low regularity well-posedness for a Whitham-Boussinesq type syste…
In this paper, we review the history and current state-of-the-art in the modelling of long nonlinear dispersive waves. For the sake of conciseness of this review, we omit the unidirectional models and focus especially on some classical and improved Boussinesq-type and Serre-Green-Naghdi equations. Finally, we propose also a unified modelling framework which incorporates several well-known and some less known dispersive wave models. The present manuscript is the first part of a series of two papers. The second part will be devoted to the numerical discretization of a practically important model…
Considered here is a class of Boussinesq systems of Nwogu type. Such systems describe propagation of nonlinear and dispersive water waves of significant interest such as solitary and tsunami waves. The initial-boundary value problem on a finite interval for this family of systems is studied both theoretically and numerically. First, the linearization of a certain generalized Nwogu system is solved analytically via the unified transform of Fokas. The corresponding analysis reveals two types of admissible boundary conditions, thereby suggesting appropriate boundary conditions for the nonlinear N…
The Boussinesq $abcd$ system is a 4-parameter set of equations posed in $\mathbb{R}_t \times \mathbb{R}_x$, originally derived by Bona, Chen and Saut as first order 2-wave approximations of the incompressible and irrotational, two dimensional water wave equations in the shallow water wave regime, in the spirit of the original Boussinesq derivation. Among many particular regimes, depending each of them in terms of the value of the parameters $(a,b,c,d)$ present in the equations, the "generic" regime is characterized by the setting $b,d>0$ and $a,c<0$. The system is hamiltonian if also $b=d$. Th…
