Construction of wave-free potentials and multipoles in a two-layer fluid having free-surface boundary condition with higher-order derivatives

There is a large class of problems in the field of fluid structure interaction where higher-order boundary conditions arise for a second-order partial differential equation. Various methods are being used to tackle these kind of mixed boundary-value problems associated with the Laplace’s equation (or Helmholtz equation) arising in the study of waves propagating through solids or fluids. One of the widely used methods in wave structure interaction is the multipole expansion method. This expansion involves a general combination of a regular wave, a wave source, a wave dipole and a regular wave-free part. The wave-free part can be further expanded in terms of wave-free multipoles which are termed as wave-free potentials. These are singular solutions of Laplace’s equation or two-dimensional Helmholz equation. Construction of these wave-free potentials and multipoles are presented here in a systematic manner for a number of situations such as two-dimensional non-oblique and oblique waves, three dimensional waves in two-layer fluid with free surface condition with higher order partial derivative are considered. In particular, these are obtained taking into account of the effect of the presence of surface tension at the free surface and also in the presence of an ice-cover modelled as a thin elastic plate. Also for limiting case, it can be shown that the multipoles and wave-free potential functions go over to the single layer multipoles and wave-free potential.