The Korteweg-de Vries Hierarchy and Long Water-Waves

Abstract

By using the multiple scale method with the simultaneous introduction of multiple times, we study the propagation of long surface-waves in a shallow inviscid fluid. As a consequence of the requirements of scale invariance and absence of secular terms in each order of the perturbative expansion, we show that the Korteweg-de Vries hierarchy equations do appear in the description of such waves. Finally, we show that this procedure of eliminating secularities is closely related to the renormalization technique introduced by Kodama and Taniuti.