On cusped solitary waves in finite water depth

It is well-known that the Camassa-Holm (CH) equation admits both of the peaked and cusped solitary waves in shallow water. However, it was an open question whether or not the exact wave equations can admit them in finite water depth. Besides, it was traditionally believed that cusped solitary waves, whose 1st-derivative tends to infinity at crest, are essentially different from peaked solitary ones with finite 1st-derivative. Currently, based on the symmetry and the exact water wave equations, Liao [1] proposed a unified wave model (UWM) for progressive gravity waves in finite water depth. The UWM admits not only all traditional smooth progressive waves but also the peaked solitary waves in finite water depth: in other words, the peaked solitary progressive waves are consistent with the traditional smooth ones. In this paper, in the frame of the linearized UWM, we give, for the first time, some explicit expressions of cusped solitary waves in finite water depth, and besides reveal a close relationship between the cusped and peaked solitary waves: a cusped solitary wave is consist of an infinite number of peaked solitary ones with the same phase speed, so that it can be regarded as a special peaked solitary wave. This also well explains why and how a cuspon has an infinite 1st-derivative at crest. Besides, it is found that, when wave height is small enough, the effect of nonlinearity is negligible for the interaction of peaked waves so that these explicit expressions are good enough approximations of peaked/cusped solitary waves in finite water depth. In addition, like peaked solitary waves, the vertical velocity of a cusped solitary wave in finite water depth is also discontinuous at crest (x-0), and especially its phase speed has nothing to do with wave height, too. All of these would deepen and enrich our understandings about the cusped solitary waves. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.