Collisions of Burgers Bores with Nonlinear Waves

Abstract

This paper treats nonlinear wave current interactions in their simplest form, as an overtaking collision. In one spatial dimension, the paper investigates the collision interaction formulated as an initial value problem of a Burgers bore overtaking solutions of two types of nonlinear wave equations, Korteweg de Vries (KdV) and nonlinear Schrodinger (NLS). The bore wave state arising after the overtaking Burgers-KdV collision in numerical simulations is found to depend qualitatively on the balance between nonlinearity and dispersion in the KdV equation. The Burgers-KdV system is also made stochastic by following the stochastic advection by Lie transport approach (SALT).