Numerical simulation of gravity waves (Q685836)

We present a new spectral method to simulate numerically the water-wave problem in a channel for a fluid of finite or infinite depth. The numerical method is based on the reduction of this problem to a lower- dimensional computation involving surface variables alone. To accomplish this, we describe the Taylor expansion of the Dirichlet-Neumann operator in homogeneous powers of the surface elevation. The method is illustrated by computing the long time evolution of modulated wave packets and of approximations to the Stokes steady wave train.