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Homogenized Korteweg–de Vries and Boussinesq models for anisotropic propagation of solitary waves over a structured bathymetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 December 2025

Kim Pham*
Affiliation:
LMI, ENSTA Paris, Institut Polytechnique de Paris , 91120 Palaiseau, France
Agnès Maurel*
Affiliation:
Institut Langevin, ESPCI Paris, CNRS, Université PSL, Sorbonne Université , 1 rue Jussieu, 75005 Paris, France
Amin Chabchoub
Affiliation:
Marine Physics and Engineering Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Onna-son, Okinawa 904-0495, Japan Department of Infrastructure Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia
*
Corresponding authors: Agnès Maurel, agnes.maurel@espci.fr; Kim Pham, kim.pham@ensta.fr
Corresponding authors: Agnès Maurel, agnes.maurel@espci.fr; Kim Pham, kim.pham@ensta.fr

Abstract

We derive effective Boussinesq and Korteweg–de Vries equations governing nonlinear wave propagation over a structured bathymetry using a three-scale homogenization approach. The model captures the anisotropic effects induced by the bathymetry, leading to significant modifications in soliton dynamics. Homogenized parameters, determined from elementary cell problems, reveal strong directional dependencies in wave speed and dispersion. Our results provide new insights into nonlinear wave propagation in structured shallow-water environments, and consequently motivate further fundamental and applied studies in wave hydrodynamics and coastal engineering.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. Nonlinear wave propagating obliquely over a structured bathymetry.

Figure 1

Figure 2. (a) Nonlinear wave propagation over a bathymetry that is periodic in $x$ and invariant in $y$. (b) The effective wave parameters are derived from elementary problems set in the two-dimensional unit cell $\varOmega$ using rescaled coordinates $x_{{m}}=x/{h}$ and ${z_{{m}}}=z/{h}$, and we set ${S}=|\varOmega |$ the unit cell area.

Figure 2

Table 1. The five elementary problems follow the same Poisson-type cell problem (2.11). For each, we provide the corresponding bulk sources $F({\boldsymbol r}_{{m}})$, $G({\boldsymbol r}_{{m}})$ and surface source $H(x_{{m}})$.

Figure 3

Table 2. Explicit solutions for the elementary problems in the flat bathymetry case (with ${S}=p$ and $\overline {h}={h}$), and the corresponding effective parameters from (2.12)–(2.13) .

Figure 4

Figure 3. Non-dimensional scales of the problem, from (3.1)–(3.2). (a) The microscopic scale is associated with the wave amplitude $ka=\alpha \delta ^3$ (the macroscopic scale is that of the non-dimensional wavelength $O(1)$); (b) the intermediate, mesoscopic, scales are associated with the water depth $kh=\delta$ and array spacing $p\delta =O(\delta )$. Panels (a ii) and (b ii) show the corresponding systems of coordinates in the microscopic domain and in the mesoscopic domain, within the unit cell, see (3.6).

Figure 5

Figure 4. Parameters $(\alpha _x,n_x)$ entering the effective Boussinesq (2.7): (a) $Q^{\text{(0)}}(x_{{m}},{z_{{m}}})$ solution to (2.11) and table 1 ($\xi =0.5$, $p=0.25$); (b) ($\alpha _x,n_x$) against the rescaled periodicity $p$ for increasing rescaled water depth over the plate $\xi =0.1$ to $0.5$, with a step of 0.1).

Figure 6

Figure 5. Parameters $(d_{xx},d_{xy},d_{yx},d_{yy})$ entering the effective Boussinesq (2.7) against the rescaled periodicity $p$ for rescaled water depth over the plate $\xi =0.1$ to $0.5$ with a step of 0.1. The insets show the solutions to the elementary problems in the unit cell for $p=0.25$ and $\xi =0.5$.

Figure 7

Table 3. Estimates of the effective parameters for flat bathymetry in the limit of small periodicity to water depth ratio $p$.

Figure 8

Figure 6. Anisotropic KdV (2.8)–(2.9): variations as functions of $p$ and $\theta$ of (a) the normalized effective depths $(c_\theta /c)^2=(H_\theta /{h})$ in the linear terms; (b) $h_\theta /h$ in the dispersion; (c) $\gamma _\theta$ in the nonlinear terms. The trends, shown for $\xi =0.3$ are similar for other values of $\xi$, with $m\simeq 1+0.04(1/\xi ^2-1)$ representing the maximum of $\gamma _\theta$ obtained for $\theta =0$.

Figure 9

Figure 7. Soliton characteristics: variations of $\ell _\theta$ (spatial extent) and $u_\theta$ (velocity) of solitons, (a–b) as functions of $p$ for $\theta =0$, and (c–d) as functions of $\theta$ for $p=1$. The parameters are set to ${h}=0.1$ m and $\eta _{\scriptscriptstyle 0}=0.03$ m.

Figure 10

Figure 8. Soliton profiles $\overline {\eta }(x,t)$ propagating along $x$ ($\theta =0$), shown at $t=0$ (solid coloured lines) and $t=1$ s (dashed coloured lines), obtained from (2.10) for (a) $\xi =0.5$, (b) $\xi =0.3$ and (c) $\xi =0.1$. The grey curves represent the reference solution $\eta (x,t)$ from (2.6), which corresponds to propagation along $y$, i.e. $\overline {\eta }(y,t)$.

Figure 11

Table 4. The elementary problems at third order associated with the Poisson type cell problem (2.11). For each elementary problem, we provide the corresponding bulk sources $F({\boldsymbol r}_{{m}})$, $G({\boldsymbol r}_{{m}})$ and surface source $H(x_{{m}})$.