Some nonlinear aspects of the two-dimensional problem of a submerged body moving with constant speed in otherwise undisturbed water of uniform depth are considered. It is shown that a theory of Benjamin which predicts a uniform rise of the free surface ahead of the body and the lowering of the mean level of the waves behind it agrees well with experimental data. The local steady-flow problem is solved by a numerical method which satisfies the exact free-surface conditions. Third-order perturbation formulas for the downstream free waves are also presented. It is found that in sufficiently shallow water, the wavelength increases with increasing disturbance strength for fixed values of the free-stream-Froude number. This is opposite to the deepwater case where the wavelength decreases with increasing disturbance strength.
Singular perturbations for the exterior three-dimensional slow viscous flow problem