Flexural- and capillary-gravity waves due to fundamental singularities in an inviscid fluid of finite depth

Wave motion due to line, point and ring sources submerged in an inviscid fluid are analytically investigated. The initially quiescent fluid of finite depth, covered by a thin elastic plate or by an inertial surface with the capillary effect, is assumed to be incompressible and homogenous. The strengths of the sources are time-dependent. The linearized initial-boundary-value problem is formulated within the framework of potential flow. The perturbed flow is decomposed into the regular and the singular components. An image system is introduced for the singular part to meet the boundary condition at the flat bottom. The solutions in integral form for the velocity potentials and the surface deflexions due to various singularities are obtained by means of a joint Laplace-Fourier transform. To analyze the dynamic characteristics of the flexural- and capillary-gravity waves due to unsteady disturbances, the asymptotic representations of the wave motion are explicitly derived for large time with a fixed distance-to-time ratio by virtue of the Stokes and Scorer methods of stationary phase. It is found that the generated waves consist of three wave systems, namely the steady-state gravity waves, the transient gravity waves and the transient flexural/capillary waves. The transient wave system observed depends on the moving speed of the observer in relation to the minimal and maximal group velocities. There exists a minimal depth of fluid for the possibility of the propagation of capillary-gravity waves on an inertial surface. Furthermore, the results for the pure gravity and capillary-gravity waves in a clean surface can also be recovered as the flexural and inertial parameters tend to zero. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.