Stability of traveling wave solutions to the Whitham equation

The Whitham equation was proposed as an alternate model equation for the simplified description of unidirectional wave motion at the surface of an inviscid fluid. An advantage of the Whitham equation over the KdV equation is that it provides a more faithful description of short waves of small amplitude. Recently, Ehmstrom and Kalisch [19] established that the Whitham equation admits periodic traveling-wave solutions. The focus of this work is the stability of these solutions. The numerical results presented here suggest that all large-amplitude solutions are unstable, while small-amplitude solutions with large enough wavelength L are stable. Additionally, periodic solutions with wavelength smaller than a certain cut-off period always exhibit modulational instability. The cut-off wavelength is characterized by kh(0) = 1.145, where k = 27 pi/L is the wave number and h(0) is the mean fluid depth. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.