Ship wakes: Kelvin or Mach angle?

Phys Rev Lett

Laboratoire FAST, Université Paris-Sud, UPMC Université Paris 6, CNRS, Bâtiment 502, Campus Universitaire, 91405 Orsay, France.

Published: May 2013

From the analysis of a set of airborne images of ship wakes, we show that the wake angles decrease as U(-1) at large velocities, in a way similar to the Mach cone for supersonic airplanes. This previously unnoticed Mach-like regime is in contradiction with the celebrated Kelvin prediction of a constant angle of 19.47° independent of the ship's speed. We propose here a model, confirmed by numerical simulations, in which the finite size of the disturbance explains this transition between the Kelvin and Mach regimes at a Froude number Fr=U/√[gL]~/=0.5, where L is the hull ship length.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.214503DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

ship wakes
8
kelvin mach
8
wakes kelvin
4
mach angle?
4
angle? analysis
4
analysis set
4
set airborne
4
airborne images
4
images ship
4
wakes wake
4

Similar Publications

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!