Medium amplitude model for internal waves over large topography variation (Q2147852)

The authors derive and rigorously justify a model for the propagation of gravity waves at the interface between two layers of immiscible fluids, with a flat rigid lid but large bottom topography variations. The model is constructed starting from the bilayer Serre-Green-Naghdi (or Miyata-Choi-Camassa) system, after neglecting some strongly nonlinear dispersive terms, and using suitable algebra. It is new also in the (one-layer) free-surface setting. The main result is the large-time well-posedness of the initial value problem for the model in Sobolev spaces, under some assumptions on the initial data and bottom topography. This follows from exhibiting a quasilinear symmetric hyperbolic structure, from which the energy method can be employed.