In this work we prove the equivalence between three different weak formulations of the steady periodic water wave problem where the vorticity is discontinuous. In particular, we prove that generalised versions of the standard Euler and stream function formulation of the governing equations are equivalent to a weak version of the recently introduced modified-height formulation. The weak solutions of these formulations are considered in Hölder spaces.
We construct small-amplitude steady periodic gravity water waves arising as the free surface of water flows that contain stagnation points and possess a discontinuous distribution of vorticity in the sense that the flows consist of two layers of constant but different vorticities. We also describe the streamline pattern in the moving frame for the constructed flows.
We investigate the existence of solitary gravity waves traversing a two-dimensional body of water that is bounded below by a flat impenetrable ocean bed and above by a free surface of constant pressure. Our main interest is constructing waves of this form that exhibit a discontinuous distribution of vorticity. More precisely, this means that the velocity limits both upstream and downstream to a laminar flow that is merely Lipschitz continuous. We prove that, for any choice of background velocity with this regularity, there exists a global curve of solutions bifurcating from a critical laminar …
In this paper we construct periodic capillarity-gravity water waves with an arbitrary bounded vorticity distribution. This is achieved by reexpressing, in the height function formulation of the water wave problem, the boundary condition obtained from Bernoulli's principle as a nonlocal differential equation. This enables us to establish the existence of weak solutions of the problem by using elliptic estimates and bifurcation theory. Secondly, we investigate the a priori regularity of these weak solutions and prove that they are in fact strong solutions of the problem, describing waves with a …
We provide high-order approximations to periodic travelling wave profiles and to the velocity field and the pressure beneath the waves, in flows with constant vorticity over a flat bed.
In this paper, we consider steady Euler flows in a planar bounded domain in which the vorticity is sharply concentrated in a finite number of disjoint regions of small diameter. Such flows are closely related to the point vortex model and can be regarded as desingularization of point vortices. By an adaption of the vorticity method, we construct a family of steady Euler flows in which the vorticity is concentrated near a global minimum point of the Robin function of the domain, and the corresponding stream function satisfies a semilinear elliptic equation with a given profile function. Further…
In this paper we consider the steady water wave problem for waves that possess a merely $L_r-$integrable vorticity, with $r\in(1,\infty)$ being arbitrary. We first establish the equivalence of the three formulations--the velocity formulation, the stream function formulation, and the height function formulation-- in the setting of strong solutions, regardless of the value of $r$. Based upon this result and using a suitable notion of weak solution for the height function formulation, we then establish, by means of local bifurcation theory, the existence of small amplitude capillary and capillary…
The vortex-wave system describes the motion of a two-dimensional ideal fluid in which the vorticity includes continuously distributed vorticity, which is called the background vorticity, and a finite number of concentrated vortices. In this paper we restrict ourselves to the case of a single point vortex in bounded domains. We prove the existence of steady vortex patch solutions to this system with prescribed distribution for the background vorticity. Moreover, we show that the supports of these solutions "shrink" to a minimum point of the Kirchhoff-Routh function as the strength parameter of …
This paper studies periodic traveling gravity waves at the free surface of water in a flow of constant vorticity over a flat bed. Using conformal mappings the free-boundary problem is transformed into a quasilinear pseudodifferential equation for a periodic function of one variable. The new formulation leads to a regularity result and, by use of bifurcation theory, to the existence of waves of small amplitude even in the presence of stagnation points in the flow.
This paper considers two-dimensional steady solitary waves with constant vorticity propagating under the influence of gravity over an impermeable flat bed. Unlike in previous works on solitary waves, we allow for both internal stagnation points and overhanging wave profiles. Using analytic global bifurcation theory, we construct continuous curves of large-amplitude solutions. Along these curves, either the wave amplitude approaches the maximum possible value, the dimensionless wave speed becomes unbounded, or a singularity develops in a conformal map describing the fluid domain. We also show t…
We consider the angle $θ$ of inclination (with respect to the horizontal) of the profile of a steady 2D inviscid symmetric periodic or solitary water wave subject to gravity. Although $θ$ may surpass 30$^\circ$ for some irrotational waves close to the extreme wave, Amick [Ami87] proved that for any irrotational wave the angle must be less than 31.15$^\circ$. Is the situation similar for periodic or solitary waves that are not irrotational? The extreme Gerstner wave has infinite depth, adverse vorticity and vertical cusps ($θ= 90^\circ$). Moreover, numerical calculations show that even waves of…
This paper studies the classical water wave problem with vorticity described by the Euler equations with a free surface under the influence of gravity over a flat bottom. Based on fundamental work \cite{ConstantinStrauss}, we first obtain two continuous bifurcation curves which meet the laminar flow only one time by using modified analytic bifurcation theorem. They are symmetric waves whose profiles are monotone between each crest and trough. Furthermore, we find that there is at least one inflection point on the wave profile between successive crests and troughs and the free surface is strict…
In this paper, we study steady vortex patch solutions to the incompressible Euler equations in a planar bounded domain $D$. Let $ψ_0$ be the solution of the elliptic problem $-Δψ_{0} =1$ in $D$; $ψ_0=0$ on $\partial D$. We prove that for any finite collection of isolated maximum points of $ψ_0$, say $\{x_1,\cdot\cdot\cdot,x_k\},$ and any $k$-tuple $\vecκ=(κ_1,\cdot,\cdot,\cdot,κ_k)$ with $κ_i>0$ and $|\vecκ|:=\sum_{i=1}^kκ_i<<1,$ there exists a steady solution of the Euler equations such that the vorticity has the form $ω^{\vecκ}=1-I_{\cup_{i=1}^k A^{\vecκ}_i}$, where $I$ denotes the character…
This paper is concerned with two-dimensional, steady, periodic water waves propagating at the free surface of water in a flow of constant vorticity over an impermeable flat bed. The motion of these waves is assumed to be governed both by surface tension and gravitational forces. A new reformulation of this problem is given, which is valid without restriction on the geometry or amplitude of the wave profiles and possesses a structure amenable to global bifurcation. The existence of global curves and continua of solutions bifurcating at certain parameter values from flat, laminar flows is then e…
In this paper, we investigate the singularity near the degenerate points of the steady axisymmetric flow with general vorticity of an inviscid incompressible fluid acted on by gravity and with a free surface. We called the points on the free boundary at which the gradient of the stream function vanishes as the degenerate points. The main results in this paper give the different classifications of the singularity near the degenerate points on the free surface. More precisely, we obtained that at the stagnation points, the possible profiles must be a Stokes corner, or a horizontal cusp, or a hor…
In this paper we prove the existence of steady multiple vortex patch solutions to the vortex-wave system in a planar bounded domain. The construction is performed by solving a certain variational problem for the vorticity and studying its asymptotic behavior as the vorticity strength goes to infinity.
In this paper we mainly investigate the traveling wave solution of the two dimensional Euler equations with gravity at the free surface over a flat bed. We assume that the free surface is almost periodic in the horizontal direction. Using conformal mappings, one can change the free boundary problem into a fixed boundary problem with some unknown functions in the boundary condition. By virtue of the Hilbert transform, the problem is equivalent to a quasilinear pseudodifferential equation for a almost periodic function of one variable. The bifurcation theory ensures us to obtain a existence resu…
The quasi-geostrophic equation or the Euler equation with dissipation studied in the present paper is a simplified form of the atmospheric circulation model introduced by Charney and DeVore [J. Atmos. Sci. 36(1979), 1205-1216] on the existence of multiple steady states to the understanding of the persistence of atmospheric blocking. The fluid motion defined by the equation is driven by a zonal thermal forcing and an Ekman friction forcing measured by $κ>0$. It is proved that the steady-state solution is unique for $κ>1$ while multiple steady-state solutions exist for $κ<κ_{crit}$ with respect …
The problem for two-dimensional steady gravity driven water waves with vorticity is investigated. Using a multidimensional bifurcation argument, we prove the existence of small-amplitude periodic steady waves with an arbitrary number of crests per period. The role of bifurcation parameters is played by the roots of the dispersion equation.
In this paper we construct a family of steady symmetric vortex patches for the incompressible Euler equations in an open disk. The result is obtained by studying a variational problem in which the kinetic energy of the fluid is maximized subject to some appropriate constraints for the vorticity. Moreover, we show that these vortex patches shrink to a given minimum point of the corresponding Kirchhoff-Routh function as the vorticity strength parameter goes to infinity.
In this paper, we study two-dimensional steady incompressible Euler flows in which the vorticity is sharply concentrated in a finite number of regions of small diameter in a bounded domain. Mathematical analysis of such flows is an interesting and physically important research topic in fluid mechanics. The main purpose of this paper is to prove that in such flows the locations of these concentrated blobs of vorticity must be in the vicinity of some critical point of the Kirchhoff-Routh function, which is determined by the geometry of the domain. The vorticity is assumed to be only in $L^{4/3},…
In this paper, we investigate steady Euler flows in a two-dimensional bounded domain. By an adaption of the vorticity method, we prove that for any nonconstant harmonic function $q$, which corresponds to a nontrivial irrotational flow, there exists a family of steady Euler flows with small circulation in which the vorticity is continuous and supported in a small neighborhood of the set of maximum points of $q$ near the boundary, and the corresponding stream function satisfies a semilinear elliptic equation with a given profile function. Moreover, if $q$ has $k$ isolated maximum points $\{\bar{…
We study the asymptotic spatial behavior of the vorticity field, $ω(x,t)$, associated to a time-periodic Navier-Stokes flow past a body, $\mathscr B$, in the class of weak solutions satisfying a Serrin-like condition. We show that, outside the wake region, $\mathcal R$, $ω$ decays pointwise at an exponential rate, uniformly in time. Moreover, denoting by $\barω$ its time-average over a period and by $ω_P:=ω-\barω$ its purely periodic component, we prove that inside $\mathcal R$, $\barω$ has the same algebraic decay as that known for the associated steady-state problem, whereas $ω_P$ decays eve…
In this paper we develop an existence theory for small amplitude, steady, two-dimensional water waves in the presence of wind in the air above. The presence of the wind is modeled by a Kelvin--Helmholtz type discontinuity across the air--water interface, and a corresponding jump in the circulation of the fluids there. We consider both fluids to be inviscid, with the water region being irrotational and of finite depth. The air region is considered with constant vorticity in the case of infinite depth and with a general vorticity profile in the case of a finite, lidded atmosphere.
We prove the Benjamin and Lighthill conjecture for all two-dimensional steady water waves with an arbitrary vorticity distribution. We show that the flow force constant of an arbitrary smooth wave is bounded by the corresponding flow force constants for conjugate laminar flows. We prove these inequalities without any assumptions on the geometry of the surface profile and put no restrictions on wave's amplitude. Furthermore, we give a complete description of cases when equalities can occur. Our results are new already for Stokes waves with vorticity, while the case of equalities is new even in …
We study wave-current interactions in two-dimensional water flows of constant vorticity over a flat bed. For large-amplitude periodic traveling waves that propagate at the water surface in the same direction as the underlying current (downstream waves), we prove explicit uniform bounds for their amplitude. In particular, our estimates show that the maximum amplitude of the waves becomes vanishingly small as the vorticity increases without limit. We also prove that the downstream waves on a global bifurcating branch are never overhanging, and that their mass flux and Bernoulli constant are unif…
We investigate a steady planar flow of an ideal fluid in a bounded simple connected domain and focus on the vortex patch problem with prescribed vorticity strength. There are two methods to deal with the existence of solutions for this problem: the vorticity method and the stream function method. A long standing open problem is whether these two entirely different methods result in the same solution. In this paper, we will give a positive answer to this problem by studying the local uniqueness of the solutions. Another result obtained in this paper is that if the domain is convex, then the vor…
In a convex domain $Ø\subset\R^3$, we consider the minimization of a 3D-Ginzburg-Landau type energy $E_\v(u)=1/2\int_Ø|\n u|^2+\frac{1}{2\v^2}(a^2-|u|^2)^2$ with a discontinuous pinning term $a$ among $H^1(Ø,\C)$-maps subject to a Dirichlet boundary condition $g\in H^{1/2}(\pØ,§^1)$. The pinning term $a:\R^3\to\R^*_+$ takes a constant value $b\in(0,1)$ in $ø$, an inner strictly convex subdomain of $Ø$, and 1 outside $ø$. We prove energy estimates with various error terms depending on assumptions on $Ø,ø$ and $g$. In some special cases, we identify the vorticity defects via the concentration of…
We prove an existence result for solutions to the stationary Euler equations in a domain with nonsmooth boundary. This is an extension of a previous existence result in smooth domains by Alber (1992). The domains we consider have a boundary consisting of three parts, one where fluid flows into the domain, one where the fluid flows out, and one which no fluid passes through. These three parts meet at right angles. An example of this would be a right cylinder with fluid flowing in at one end and out at the other, with no fluid going through the mantle. A large part of the proof is dedicated to s…
We study stationary capillary-gravity waves in a two-dimensional body of water that rests above a flat ocean bed and below vacuum. This system is described by the Euler equations with a free surface. Our main result states that there exist large families of such waves that carry finite energy and exhibit an exponentially localized distribution of (nontrivial) vorticity. This is accomplished by combining ideas drawn from the theory of spike-layer solutions to singularly perturbed elliptic equations, with techniques from the study of steady solutions of the water wave problem.
We construct a family of steady solutions to the two-dimensional incompressible Euler equation in a general bounded domain, such that the vorticity is supported in two well-separated regions of small diameter and converges to a pair of point vortices with opposite signs. Compared with previous results, we do not need to assume the existence of an isolated local minimum point of the Kirchhoff-Routh function. Moreover, due to their variational nature, the solutions obtained are Lyapunov stable in $L^p$ norm of the vorticity. The proofs are achieved by maximizing the kinetic energy over an approp…
In this paper, we are concerned with nonlinear desingularization of steady vortex rings of three-dimensional incompressible Euler fluids. We focus on the case when the vorticity function has a simple discontinuity, which corresponding to a jump in vorticity at the boundary of the cross-section of the vortex ring. Using the vorticity method, we construct a family of steady vortex rings which constitute a desingularization of the classical circular vortex filament in several kinds of domains. The precise localization of the asymptotic singular vortex filament is proved to depend on the circulati…
We study axially symmetric $D$-solutions of three dimensional steady Navier-Stokes equations. We prove that if the velocity $u$ decays like $|x'|^{-(\frac{2}{3})^+}$ uniformly for $z$, or the vorticity $ω$ decays like $|x'|^{-(\frac{5}{3})^+}$ uniformly for $z$, then $u$ vanishes. Here $|x'|$ denotes the distance to the axis.
In this paper we construct small amplitude periodic internal waves traveling at the boundary region between two rotational and homogeneous fluids with different densities. Within a period, the waves we obtain have the property that the gradient of the stream function associated to the fluid beneath the interface vanishes, on the wave surface, at exactly two points. Furthermore, there exists a critical layer which is bounded from above by the wave profile. Besides, we prove, without excluding the presence of stagnation points, that if the vorticity function associated to each fluid in part is r…
We establish the existence and uniqueness of smooth solutions with large vorticity and weak solutions with vortex sheets/entropy waves for the steady Euler equations for both compressible and incompressible fluids in arbitrary infinitely long nozzles. We first develop a new approach to establish the existence of smooth solutions without assumptions on the sign of the second derivatives of the horizontal velocity, or the Bernoulli and entropy functions, at the inlet for the smooth case. Then the existence for the smooth case can be applied to construct approximate solutions to establish the exi…
We prove real analyticity of all the streamlines, including the free surface, of a gravity- or capillary-gravity-driven steady flow of water over a flat bed, with a Hölder continuous vorticity function, provided that the propagating speed of the wave on the free surface exceeds the horizontal fluid velocity throughout the flow. Furthermore, if the vorticity possesses some Gevrey regularity of index $s$, then the stream function admits the same Gevrey regularity throughout the fluid domain; in particular if the Gevrey index $s$ equals to 1, then we obtain analyticity of the stream function. The…
We consider a multi-fluid system with several free interfaces. For this system we prove existence of three-dimensional steady gravity-capillary waves with non-zero vorticity. We obtain non-zero vorticity by prescribing the relative velocity fields to be Beltrami fields, for which the vorticity and velocity are parallel. The main result is a multi-parameter bifurcation result for small amplitude waves given in two variants: a first theorem guaranteeing existence under some general parameter assumptions; and a second specific but less exhaustive theorem, for which the assumptions may be explicit…
