Experimental study of water waves : nonlinear effects and absorption

Overview & Synopsis

This thesis presents an experimental investigation on the propagation of nonlinear water waves. The first part focuses on the space-time measurements of nonlinear water waves, when it passes over a submerged step. The space-time resolved measurement allows us to separate the different components at the second order, which are compared with a theoretical nonlinear multi-modal model. The important contribution of the surface tension at higher orders is verified by measuring the beating length of the second harmonic. In the same conditions, the addition of a reflecting wall at the end of the channel sets a rectangular tank with submerged step, where the excitation of low-frequency modes yields a quasi-periodic dynamics. Concurrently, a research about aspects that have to be considered in small scale experiments of surface waves has been carried out. In shallow water, the damping of water waves is highly influenced by the bottom friction. This dependence was measured for randomly distributed waves, revealing the relative contribution of this effect. Moreover, the dynamic of the contact line plays a significant role when the wave-amplitude is small and the boundaries are near, both in relation to the capillary length. We observed experimentally how the wetting of the boundaries changes the reflection and the wave-front curvature. The final part covers the measurement of perfect wave absorption by a coupled resonator in a narrow waveguide. The trapped modes generated by a cylinder shifted from the channel axis were excited to generate the absorption.