Mini-Tsunami Made by Ship Moving Across a Depth Change
Publication: Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering
Volume 146, Issue 5
Abstract
A ship moving across a shallow depth change, in water in a small or narrow space, may create a small tsunami, 0.5–1 km long, observed as a harbor wave on shore, where a wave height up to 1.4 m has been measured. The paper gives an interpretation of the generation process of this new phenomenon. At a depth change, the ship-induced fluid velocity produces a reaction velocity of equal magnitude and opposite direction, orthogonal to the bottom. This velocity appears as a vertical velocity at the water surface, making the waves. The waves propagate with the shallow water speed upstream of a ship moving at subcritical speed. Theory and numerical calculations for a real ship geometry are compared with a moving pressure distribution. Computations compare favorably with a few available wave height measurements.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. This includes numerical input parameters and results, and observation data.
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Published In
Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering
Volume 146 • Issue 5 • September 2020
Copyright
© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 19, 2019
Accepted: Feb 10, 2020
Published online: May 18, 2020
Published in print: Sep 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Oct 18, 2020
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