Wave scattering by ice sheets of varying thickness

The problem of wave scattering by sea-ice of varying thickness and non-zero draught floating on water of finite depth is considered. To do so, the common idealisation of the ice as a thin-elastic plate, which is static in all but its flexural response, is adopted. Furthermore, the assumptions of linear and time harmonic motio,ns are made. The physical situation is initially formulated as a boundary-value problem but is subsequently reformulated as a variational principle. Here, the geometry is unconstrained and the ice covering may be either complete or partial. Additionally, the bed profile is permitted to undulate. The solution method proceeds via application of the Rayleigh-Ritz method in conjunction with the variational principle. This restricts the vertical component of the velocity potential that represents the fluid motion to a finite-dimensional subspace and the stationary point. of the variational principle over this finite space is sought. As the dimension of the subspace is increased, a sequence of approximations is generated, which can be made arbitrarily close to the full linear solution.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo