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Water Waves from General, Time-Dependent Surface Pressure Distribution in the Presence of a Shear Current

We obtain a general solution for the water waves resulting from a general, time-dependent surface pressure distribution, in the presence of a shear current of uniform vorticity beneath the surface, in three dimensions. Linearized governing equations and boundary conditions including the effects of gravity, a distributed external pressure disturbance, and constant finite depth, are solved analytically, and particular attention is paid to classic initial value problems: an initial pressure impulse and a steady pressure distribution which appears suddenly. In the present paper, good agreement with previous results is demonstrated. We subsequently show both analytically and numerically how transient waves from a suddenly appearing steady pressure distribution vanis for large times, and steady ship waves remain. The transient contribution to wave resistance was derived. The results show that a shear current has significant impact on the transient wave motions, resulting in asymmetry between upstream and downstream waves. The case of the suddenly appearing steady pressure is an intermediate case between ring waves and ship waves, starting out as the former and evolving gradually into the latter. The ship's direction of motion relative to the current is found to be crucial in determining how quickly effects of transient waves die out. Transient effects take much longer to doe out for a ship going against the shear flow than for one going downstream, when the two ships have the same velocity relative to the water surface. For ship motion against the shear current, thus, wave effects of transients, e.g., due to maneuvering could accumulate and be far more significant than on a uniform current.