arXiv · 1507.02215
The multilayer shallow water system in the limit of small density contrast
Abstract
We study the inviscid multilayer Saint-Venant (or shallow-water) system in the limit of small density contrast. We show that, under reasonable hyperbolicity conditions on the flow and a smallness assumption on the initial surface deformation, the system is well-posed on a large time interval, despite the singular limit. By studying the asymptotic limit, we provide a rigorous justification of the widely used rigid-lid and Boussinesq approximations for multilayered shallow water flows. The asymptotic behaviour is similar to that of the incompressible limit for Euler equations, in the sense that there exists a small initial layer in time for ill-prepared initial data, accounting for rapidly propagating "acoustic" waves (here, the so-called barotropic mode) which interact only weakly with the "incompressible" component (here, baroclinic).
Explore related subjects
Keep this discovery
Vincent Duchêne. 2015-07-08. The multilayer shallow water system in the limit of small density contrast. https://doi.org/10.3233/asy-161366
Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.