The impact of a water wedge on a wall

Abstract

This paper is intended to give some indication of the impact forces of a water wave on a wall. The effect of gravity forces in the small time interval of impact considered will be small and is neglected. The shape of the wave before impact is considered to be a two-dimensional wedge which is assumed to strike a wall at right angles to its path. The wedge is assumed to be infinite in extent and to have uniform translational velocity V before impact. The choice of a wedge shape enables the problem to be formulated in terms of similarity variables x/Vt y/Vt, where the origin of the x, y plane is at the initial point of contact of the vertex of the wedge with the wall. The solution presented here can be easily adapted to the problem of an axi-symmetric cone of water striking a wall, but this is not pursued in the present paper.