A Hamiltonian formulation for nonlinear wave-body interactions

Abstract

Here we show that gravity driven water waves - on a fluid of arbitrary variable depth - interacting with rigid bodies floating freely in or below the free surface can be described as an infinite-dimensional Hamiltonian system. It will ap­pear that, with appropriate choices for the canonical vari­ables and the Hamiltonian, the complete set of equations of motion - i.e. the nonlinear free surface conditions and the hydrodynamic equations of motion for the rigid bodies - can be written in a canonical form.