Internal Wave Wakes of a Body Moving in a Stratified Fluid

Abstract

Equations are derived for the wake produced by a source of waves moving in any dispersive homogeneous anisotropic medium. The behavior of the wake far from the source and near the source path are examined in detail. Then, internal waves in a stratified fluid with a thermocline of finite thickness are considered. The dispersion equations for all the propagating modes, of which there are infinitely many, are found. They are used in the preceding formulas to determine the wakes produced by an object moving horizontally with constant velocity in such a stratified fluid. A novel feature of these wakes is that the wavefronts of each of them have cusps spaced periodically along the path of the source.