Transverse waves in a channel with decreasing width

摘要

Previous studies have shown that transverse waves may occur when the wavelength of incident waves and the channel width satisfy certain specific conditions. The effect of channel width on the excitation and development of transverse waves is investigated experimentally in this study. The experiments are carried out in a long channel, in which seven Plexiglas plates are used to adjust the width of the cross section. The width of the water channel decreases as the distance from the wavemaker increases. Incident regular waves are generated by a computer-controlled piston-type wavemaker at one end of the channel and propagate away along the channel. By means of capacitance-type wave gauges and using the transfer function method based on the linear wave theory, the evolution of transverse waves down the channel is studied. It is shown that the variation of transverse-wave amplitude decreases as the cross-section width decreases. The mode number is found to be correlated with the width of the cross section. The behavior of transverse waves in different cross sections is shown graphically. The effect of channel width on transverse waves is also discussed.