Breathers in a three-layer fluid

In a three-layer system, weakly nonlinear theory predicts that breathers exist under certain conditions which, under the Boussinesq approximation, include symmetric stratifications in which the density jump across each interface is the same and the upper and lower layer thicknesses are equal and less than 9/26 of the total water depth. The existence and characteristics of fully nonlinear breathers in this symmetric stratification are poorly understood. Therefore, this study investigates fully nonlinear breathers in a three-layer symmetric stratification in order to clarify their characteristics by making direct comparisons between numerical simulation results and theoretical solutions. A normalization of the breather profiles is introduced using theoretical solutions of a breather and a new energy scale is proposed to evaluate their potential and kinetic energy. We apply fully nonlinear and strongly dispersive internal wave equations in a three-layer system using a variational principle. The computational results show that the larger the amplitude, the shorter the length of the envelope of breathers, which agrees with the theoretical solution. However, breathers based on the theoretical solutions cannot progress without deformation and decay due to the emission of short small-amplitude internal waves. Furthermore we demonstrate that the shedding of larger amplitude waves occurs, and the amplitude of the envelope decays more strongly when the density interface crosses the critical depth where the ratio of the upper layer thickness and the total water depth is 9/26 suggesting a limiting amplitude for fully nonlinear breathers.