Potential flow past a sinusoidal wall be direct variation (Q1085705)

The problem of semi-infinite potential flow past a sinusoidal wall is solved by direct variation. The direct variation proceeds from the theorem of Kelvin that states that potential flows in simply connected domains possess a minimum kinetic energy. The difficulties due to the semi-infinite domain are discussed and resolved. Trial functions which are natural solutions of the field equation and the far-field boundary condition, and which satisfy the periodicity of the flow are used. The resulting system of linear equations becomes ill- conditioned as the wall height and number of trial solutions are increased, but accurate evaluations of streamlines and field velocities for wall heights up to 0.9 are found by using established numerical methods.