Fully nonlinear Boussinesq-type equations with optimized parameters for water wave propagation

For simulating water wave propagation in coastal areas, various Boussinesq-type equations with improved properties in intermediate or deep water have been presented in the past several decades. How to choose proper Boussinesq-type equations has been a practical problem for engineers. In this paper, approaches of improving the characteristics of the equations, i.e. linear dispersion, shoaling gradient and nonlinearity, are reviewed and the advantages and disadvantages of several different Boussinesq-type equations are compared for the applications of these Boussinesq-type equations in coastal engineering with relatively large sea areas. Then for improving the properties of Boussinesq-type equations, a new set of fully nonlinear Boussinseq-type equations with modified representative velocity are derived, which can be used for better linear dispersion and nonlinearity. Based on the method of minimizing the overall error in different ranges of applications, sets of parameters are determined with optimized linear dispersion, linear shoaling and nonlinearity, respectively. Finally, a test example is given for validating the results of this study. Both results show that the equations with optimized parameters display better characteristics than the ones obtained by matching with pad, approximation.