Uni-directional waves over slowly varying bottom. I: Derivation of a KdV- type of equation (Q1329861)

(From the authors' abstract.) The exact equations for surface waves over an uneven bottom can be formulated as a Hamiltonian system, with the total energy of the fluid as Hamiltonian. If the bottom variations are over a length scale \(L\) that is longer than the characteristic wavelength \(\ell\), the waves approximating the kinetic energy for the case of ``rather long and rather low'' gives equations of Boussinesq type. If in the case of an even bottom one restricts further to uni-directional waves, the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation is obtained. For slowly varying bottom this uni-directionalization will be studied in detail in this part I, in a very direct way which is simpler than other derivations found in the literature. The surface elevation is shown to be described by an equation of forced KdV-type. The modification of the obtained KdV- equation shares the property of the standard KdV-equation and has a Hamiltonian structure, but now the structure map depends explicitly on the spatial variable through the bottom topography.