Solitary Waves Beneath an Ice Sheet

• Main Authors: E. Parau, F. Dias
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2000
• Subjects: Ice Sheet
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.27.775; http://www.cmla.ens-cachan.fr/Cmla/Publications/2000/CMLA2000-19.ps.gz

A load moving on top of an ice sheet can generate waves. The present study is restricted to load speeds close to the critical speed corresponding to the minimum of the dispersion curve. The consequences of this minimum, which are well-known in the context of capillarygravity waves, are analyzed in the context of ice waves. Contrary to capillary-gravity waves, a lot of experiments have been performed on ice waves. On the other hand, most existing theoretical results on the ice/water problem are based on the linearization of the problem. The linearization gives reasonable results far from the minimum of the dispersion curve, but diverges near the minimum. In the present work, we first consider the ice/water problem without the presence of a moving load. A weakly nonlinear analysis, based on dynamical systems theory and on normal forms, is performed. The difference between the critical speed and the wave speed is taken as bifurcation parameter. The resulting normal form is integrated. Sol.