The solution of the long-wave equation for various nonlinear depth and breadth profiles in the power-law form

Abstract Long waves bring many important challenges in the ocean and coastal engineering, including but are not limited to harbor resonance and run-up. Therefore, understanding and modeling their dynamics is crucially important. Although their dynamics over various types of geometries are well-studied in the literature, the study of the geometries with power-law variations remains an open problem in this setting. With this motivation, in this paper, we derive the exact analytical solutions of the long-wave equation over nonlinear depth and breadth profiles having power-law forms given by h ( x ) = c 1 x a and b ( x ) = c 2 x c , where the parameters c 1 , c 2 , a , c are some constants. We show that for these types of power-law forms of depth and breadth profiles, the long-wave equation admits solutions in terms of Bessel functions and Cauchy–Euler series. We also derive the seiching periods and resonance conditions for these forms of depth and breadth variations. Our results can be used to investigate the long-wave dynamics and their envelope characteristics over equilibrium beach profiles, the effects of nonlinear harbor entrances and angled nonlinear seawall breadth variations in the power-law forms on these dynamics, and the effects of reconstruction, geomorphological changes, sedimentation, and dredging to harbor resonance, to the shift in resonance periods and to the seiching characteristics in lakes and barrages.