Stokes Waves Revisited: Exact Solutions in the Asymptotic Limit

TL;DR

This paper introduces an exact asymptotic solution for Stokes waves that overcomes previous limitations of secular variation, providing a more accurate and higher-order extendable model for surface gravity waves in deep water.

Contribution

It presents a compact, exact n-ordered solution for Stokes waves in the asymptotic limit, improving upon traditional perturbative methods by eliminating secular variation.

Findings

Provides a seamless extension to higher-order solutions.

Eliminates aperiodic secular variation in wave solutions.

Enhances accuracy of engineering estimates for nonlinear surface waves.

Abstract

Stokes perturbative solution of the nonlinear (boundary value dependent) surface gravity wave problem is known to provide results of reasonable accuracy to engineers in estimating the phase speed and amplitudes of such nonlinear waves. The weakling in this structure though is the presence of aperiodic secular variation in the solution that does not agree with the known periodic propagation of surface waves. This has historically necessitated increasingly higher ordered (perturbative) approximations in the representation of the velocity profile. The present article ameliorates this long standing theoretical insufficiency by invoking a compact exact $n$-ordered solution in the asymptotic infinite depth limit, primarily based on a representation structured around the third ordered perturbative solution, that leads to a seamless extension to higher order (e.g. fifth order) forms existing in the literature. The result from this study is expected to improve phenomenological engineering estimates, now that any desired higher ordered expansion may be compacted within the same representation, but without any aperiodicity in the spectral pattern of the wave guides.