Potential flow past a sphere touching a tangent plane (Q1581055)

The authors study the uniform ideal flow past a sphere in contact with an impermeable plane in order to model the sea-wave impact on a body resting on an impermeable surface. The velocity potential, with a uniform gradient given far from the sphere, is directly proportional to the pressure impulse and satisfies Laplace equation. The solution is expressed as an integral over functions related to solutions of Laplace equations in tangent-sphere coordinates. The integral contains also an unknown function satisfying an ordinary differential equation, which is solved numerically with a high degree of accuracy. The authors give a detailed description of the potential near the sphere, separately analyzing the potential near the contact point by using a special theory for crevice region, and then matching two solutions. The explicit calculation of velocity potential and implicit calculation of pressure impulse allow the authors to predict the added mass and net impulse on the sphere.