Freely floating objects on a fluid governed by the Boussinesq equations (Q2693073)

The authors analyze the interactions of waves governed by a Boussinesq system with a partially immersed body allowed to move freely in the vertical direction.\ They distinguish between the interior domain \(\mathcal{I}=(-l,l)\) which is the projection on the horizontal axis of the region where the surface of the water is in contact with the body, and the exterior domain \( \mathcal{E}=(-\infty ,-l)\cup (l,+\infty )\), where the surface is in contact with air. In the exterior domain, \(\zeta _{e}\) and \(q_{e}\) are solution to the standard Boussinesq-Abbott system: \[ \partial _{t}\zeta _{e}+\partial _{x}q_{e}=0, \qquad (1-\tfrac{\mu }{3}\partial _{x}^{2})\partial _{t}q_{e}+\varepsilon \partial _{x}(\tfrac{1}{h}q_{e}^{2})+h_{e}\partial _{x}\zeta _{e}=0, \] where \(\varepsilon \zeta _{e}\) is the dimensionless surface elevation with respect to its rest position, \(h_{e}=1+\varepsilon \zeta _{e}\) is the dimensionless water height, and \(q_{e}\) is the horizontal discharge. In the interior domain, the horizontal discharge \(q_{i}\) and the pressure \(\underline{P}_{i}\) exerted by the fluid on the object are solution to: \[ \partial _{x}q_{i}=-\overset{..}{\delta }, \qquad (1-\tfrac{\mu }{3}\partial _{x}^{2})\partial _{t}q_{i}+\varepsilon \partial _{x}(\tfrac{1}{h_{w}} q_{i}^{2})+h_{w}\partial _{x}\zeta _{w}=-\tfrac{1}{\varepsilon }h_{w}\partial _{x}\underline{P}_{i}, \] where the bottom of the object is parametrized by \( \varepsilon \zeta _{w}(t,x)\), and \(h_{w}=1+\varepsilon \zeta _{w}\) is the dimensionless water height. The authors assume the continuity of the discharge \(q_{i}(t,\pm l)=q_{w}(t,\pm l)\) and the conservation of the total energy at the order of precision of the model. Introducing \(\kappa =\sqrt{ \mu /3}\), choosing the momentum flux \(\mathfrak{f}_{sw}\) associated with the shallow-water equations equal to \(\mathfrak{f}_{sw}=\tfrac{h^{2}-1}{ 2\varepsilon }+\varepsilon \tfrac{q^{2}}{h}=\zeta +\varepsilon (\tfrac{1}{2} \zeta ^{2}+\tfrac{q^{2}}{h})\), and assuming that \(h_{eq}\) is an even function, the authors prove that for smooth enough solutions, the resolution of the wave-structure equations is equivalent to that of the standard Boussinesq-Abbott system: \(\partial _{t}\zeta +\partial _{x}q=0\), \((1-\kappa ^{2}\partial _{x}^{2})\partial _{t}q+\partial _{x}\mathfrak{f}_{sw}=0\), on both components of the exterior domain \(\mathcal{E}\) and with transmission conditions \(\left\langle q\right\rangle =\left\langle q_{i}\right\rangle \) and \(\left[ q\right] =-2l\overset{.}{\delta }\), \(\left\langle q_{i}\right\rangle \) and \(\delta \) being solutions of first- or second-order differential equations, or of a coupled system of ODEs. The authors then prove the preceding problem may be written as a system of ODEs in the present case of a freely floating structure, for which they prove a local-in-time existence result, assuming smoothness hypotheses on the initial data. They also prove uniform estimates on this solution. They then consider a return to equilibrium problem, assuming that the fluid is initially at rest, then that the solid oscillates vertically and its motion sends waves outwards. They introduce the Cummings operator associated to the last problem that they partially reformulate as a Cummings equation. They establish an explicit expression of the Cummings operator from which they deduce its properties. They deduce the behavior of the solution to this return to equilibrium problem. In the last part of their paper, the authors present results concerning general transport equations written as \(\partial _{t}u+\mathcal{K}\ast _{x}\partial _{x}u=f\), for some convolution kernel \( \mathcal{K}\), with the initial and boundary conditions \(u_{\mid x=0}= \underline{u}\), \(u_{\mid t=0}=u^{in}\). They first consider the right- or left-going problems, in the cases where the kernel is the identity or the Bessel kernel. They prove existence results under appropriate hypotheses on the data.