10/17/2019 Kelvin wakes

Dietrich Zawischa Home/Contact Deutsche Version

Kelvin wakes
Watching ducks on a pond one may wonder how these beautiful wake patterns
arise. William Thomson (the famous physicist Lord Kelvin) found already in
1887 the remarkable fact that the angle at which the wake fans out is always the
same, regardless whether the wake is caused by a duck, a boat, or a ship, as long
as the water is deep as compared with the lengths of the generated waves [1].

Wakes of two boats on Avon

Wakes of ducks on a pond Gorge.
Photo: Arpingstone, source

While the mathematical treatment of water waves is difficult, see the Wikipedia
article, some results are easy to obtain, and in particular the shape of the wake
can be explained using only elementary maths [2].
Whereas sound waves propagate with the same velocity irrespective of their
length, with the well known effect of shock waves when flying objects exceed
sound velocity, in deep water the velocity of the waves depends on the
wavelength. The longer the waves, the faster they propagate. This can be found
from a simple dimensional analysis.
What are the quantities on which the velocity of the waves may depend? Clearly
the wavelength λ, the depth of the water H, the earths gravitation g, the density
of the water ρ, the surface tension σ, or what else? The surface tension affects
only very short waves, here we may ignore it. If the water is deep, so to say
infinitely deep, the depth cannot occur in an expression for the wave velocity.
If we have an equation like
v = something,
then this “something” must have the dimension of a velocity, i.e. length divided
by time. The square root of wavelength times gravitational acceleration has this
dimension, thus we conclude that the velocity is proportional to this root:
v ∝ √gλ .
(The exact expression for the phase velocity is vφ = √gλ ⁄ (2π) .)
The phase velocity is, roughly speaking, the velocity of the individual wave
crests. A wave train of finite length, however, moves with the group velocity
https://www.itp.uni-hannover.de/fileadmin/arbeitsgruppen/zawischa/static_html/KWake.html 1/4
10/17/2019 Kelvin wakes

which in this case is only half the phase velocity, vg = vφ/2. (This follows from
the above equation and the general expression for the group velocity, see e.g.
this Wikipedia article.) If we look at a group of waves, following a particular
crest, we see that it moves forward faster than the whole bunch, gets weaker as
it approaches its front, and vanishes. But from behind, a new crest comes up,
gets stronger, and weaker again as it approaches the leading edge …
The phase velocity of gravity waves depends on the wavelength and the group
velocity is half the phase velocity, that is all what is necessary to understand the
gross features of the wakes.
Let us first consider the
fictitious case where groups
and phases travel with the same
speed, which we assume to be
80 % of that of the boat. This is
sketched to the left. The boat
continuously produces waves.
We invoke Huygens' principle
to find the resulting shock
wave. The circles are the
elementary waves emitted at
the points marked by dots along
the boat's trajectory. At the
envelope of all the circles the
wavelets have all the same
phase and interfere
constructively which yields the
resulting wave front, whereas at
all other places the wavelets
almost cancel each other.
Next we assume that the boat
excites real water waves. We
consider a single frequency out
of the whole spectrum. Instead
of forming a shock wave, the
wavelets produced earlier have
only travelled half the way and
thus the angle which the wake
encloses with the path line of
the boat is smaller and can
easily be found graphically.
The boat excites waves of all
possible wavelengths and
corresponding phase and group
velocities, and in the left figure
the construction of the wake
angles for phase velocities of
10, 20, 30 … 99.99 percent of
the boat's speed is shown. The
red dots mark the points where
the waves emitted at point A
have arrived when the boat is at
point B. From the construction
https://www.itp.uni-hannover.de/fileadmin/arbeitsgruppen/zawischa/static_html/KWake.html 2/4
10/17/2019 Kelvin wakes

it is clear that the red dots are

lying on a circle with radius
one quarter of the distance AB.
Note that the waves with phase
velocity equal to the boat's
speed follow the boat along its
path with wake angle of 0°.
We can easily determine the
maximum angle θ of possible
wakes. The direction of the
wake is given by the tangent to
the red circle drawn from point
B. Along this line the crests of
the waves are highest, the
troughs deepest, as all the
wavelets in the neighbourhood
of wavelengths interfere
constructively. From the sketch
it is seen that sin(θ) = 1/3, and
thus θ = 19.47°. This has been
found by William Thomson,
and it is true as long as the
group velocity is half the phase
velocity.
The waves with phase velocity
equal or close to the boat's (or
duck's) speed follow the boat
(or duck) along its path with
zero or small wake angle and
form the trail of transverse
waves. The whole pattern
seems to be rigidly fixed to the
boat if that moves
straightforward with constant
speed.
Strongly powered fast boats apparently arouse narrower wakes. This has been
discussed recently by Rabaud and Moisy [3], see also [4], [5] and is due to the
fact that waves longer than the boat's hull are excited the less the longer they
are.

[1] William Thomson (1887): "On ship waves", Institution of Mechanical

Engineers, Proceedings, 38:409–434 pp. 641–649.
[2] Frank S. Crawford: Elementary derivation of the wake pattern of a boat.
Am. J. Phys. 52, 782 (1984); (abstract).
[3] Marc Rabaud and Frédéric Moisy: Ship wakes: Kelvin or Mach angle?
arXiv.org > physics > arXiv:1304.2653 or PRL 110, 214503 (2013)
[4] Lord Kelvin Wipes Out on Speed Boat Wakes? By Adrian Cho, May 9,
2013 link
[5] Reawakening the Kelvin wake. By Hamish Johnston link

https://www.itp.uni-hannover.de/fileadmin/arbeitsgruppen/zawischa/static_html/KWake.html 3/4
10/17/2019 Kelvin wakes

https://www.itp.uni-hannover.de/fileadmin/arbeitsgruppen/zawischa/static_html/KWake.html 4/4