Calculation and measurement of conical beams of three-dimensional periodic internal waves excited by a vertically oscillating piston

The structure of the wave field given by an exact solution of the linearized problem of radiation of three-dimensional periodic internal waves in a continuously stratified viscous fluid is analyzed numerically. The waves are generated by a piston, i.e., a disk lying on a fixed horizontal plane and oscillating in the vertical direction. The flow fields and the wave displacements are compared with the data of shadow visualization and measurements of the wave amplitudes made using a contact sensor. The calculated and observed wave patterns are in satisfactory agreement and the displacement distributions coincide correct to a fitting coefficient 0.7 < K < 1.1 characterizing the role of the nonlinear effects and other factors neglected in this model.