Cylindrical Eigenfunction Expansion
Contents |
Introduction
There are any situations where we want to expand the three-dimensional linear water wave solution in cylindrical co-ordinates. For example, scattering from a Bottom Mounted Cylinder or scattering from a Circular Floating Elastic Plate. In these cases it is easy to find the solution by an expansion in the cylindrical eigenfunctions. If the depth dependence can be removed the solution reduces to a two dimensional problem (see Removing The Depth Dependence). While the theory here does apply in this two dimensional situtation, the theory is presented here for the fully three dimensional (depth dependent) case. We begin by assuming the Frequency Domain Problem.
Outine of the theory
The problem for the complex water velocity potential in suitable non-dimensionalised
cylindrical coordinates,
, is given by
In three-dimensions the Sommerfeld Radiation Condition is

where
is the incident potential.
The solution of the problem for the potential in finite water depth can be found by a separation ansatz,
Substituting this into the equation for
yields
The possible separation constants
will be determined by the
free surface condition and the bed condition.
Separation of variables for a free surface
We use separation of variables
We express the potential as
and then Laplace's equation becomes
The separation of variables equation for deriving free surface eigenfunctions is as follows:
subject to the boundary conditions
and
We can then use the boundary condition at
to write
where we have chosen the value of the coefficent so we have unit value at
.
The boundary condition at the free surface (
) gives rise to:

which is the Dispersion Relation for a Free Surface
The above equation is not really the dispersion relation for a free surface, it would be better to refer to it as a transcendental equation. If we solve for all roots in the complex plane we find that the first root is a pair of imaginary roots. We denote the imaginary solutions of this equation by
and
the positive real solutions by
,
. The
of the imaginary solution is the wavenumber. We put the imaginary roots back into the equation above and use the hyperbolic relations
to arrive at the dispersion relation
We note that for a specified frequency
the equation determines the wavenumber
.
Finally we define the function
as
as the vertical eigenfunction of the potential in the open water region. From Sturm-Liouville theory the vertical eigenfunctions are orthogonal. They can be normalised to be orthonormal, but this has no advantages for a numerical implementation. It can be shown that
where
Separation of Variable for the
and
coordinates
For the solution of
we use the separation
Substituting this into Laplace's equation yields
where the separation constant
must be an integer, say
,
in order for the potential to be continuous.
can therefore be expressed as
We also obtain the following expression
Substituting
and writing
, this can be rewritten as
which is the modified version of Bessel's equation. Substituting back, the general solution is given by
where
and
are the modified
Bessel functions of the first
and second kind, respectively, of order
.
Note that
with
denoting
the Hankel function of the second kind of order
.
Also,
does not satisfy the Sommerfeld Radiation Condition
since it becomes unbounded for increasing real argument and it
represents incoming waves.
The potential
can thus be expressed in local cylindrical
coordinates as
The case of infinitely deep water
A solution will be developed for the same setting as before but under the
assumption of water of infinite depth. As in the previous section,
Laplace's equation must be solved in cylindrical coordinates
satisfying the free surface and the radiation condition. However,
instead of the bed condition, the water velocity potential is also required to
satisfy the depth condition. Therefore,
must be solved for satisfying the depth condition. It will turn out that in the case of
infinitely deep water an uncountable amount of separation constants
is valid.
As above, the general solution can be represented as
Assuming
has got a positive
imaginary part, in order to satisfy the depth condition,
then satisfies the free surface condition if
is a root of
which yields the dispersion relation
Therefore,
must even be purely imaginary. For
,
this is also obtained, but with a minus sign in front of
. However, this yields the same solution. One solution can
therefore be written as
Now,
is assumed real. In this case, it is convenient to write
the general solution in terms of cosine and sine,
This solution satisfies the depth condition automatically. Making use of the free surface condition, it follows that
which can be solved for
,
Substituting this back gives
Obviously, a negative value of
produces the same
eigenfunction as the positive one. Therefore, only positive ones are
considered, leading to the definition
This gives the vertical eigenfunctions in infinite depth.
For the radial and angular coordinate the same separation can be used as in the finite depth case so that the general solution of problem can be written as
![\phi (r,\theta,z) = \mathrm{e}^{\alpha z} \sum_{\nu = -
\infty}^{\infty} \left[ E_\nu (-\mathrm{i} \alpha) I_\nu (-\mathrm{i} \alpha r) +
F_{\nu} (-\mathrm{i} \alpha) K_\nu (-\mathrm{i} \alpha r) \right] \mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i} \nu \theta}](/files/math/c/4/b/c4b74bc4051a93eed7467287c48487c0.png)
![+ \int\limits_0^{\infty} \psi (z,\eta) \sum_{\nu = -
\infty}^{\infty} \left[ E_\nu I_\nu (\eta r) + F_{\nu} (\eta) K_\nu
(\eta r) \right] \mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i} \nu \theta} \mathrm{d}\eta.](/files/math/d/1/8/d18845b4fce3b8dc602250ebb16483f5.png)
Making use of the radiation condition as well as the relations of the Bessel functions in the same way as in the finite depth case, this can be rewritten as the eigenfunction expansion of the water velocity potential into cylindrical outgoing waves in water of infinite depth,
Example: Expansion of a plane wave
Infinite depth
In Cartesian coordinates centred at the origin, the wavefield due to a plane incident wave travelling in the direction making an angle
with the
-axis is
given by

where
is the amplitude (in displacement).
We want to express the ambient wavefield in the eigenfunction expansion of an
incoming wave in the local coordinates of a body whose mean-centre position is
. The ambient wave can be represented in an eigenfunction expansion centred at the origin as

(cf. Linton and McIver 2001, p. 169).
Since the local coordinates of the body, that is
, are centred at its mean-centre position, a phase factor has to be defined which accounts for the position from the origin. Including this phase
factor, the ambient wavefield at body is given
by

Finite depth
It is easily seen that this is the same as in the infinite-depth case except that we need to replace
by
and
by
. Therefore, we have
