Experimental study of the reflection of an internal solitary Kelvin wave in a right-angle corner

Solitary Kelvin waves are made to reflect a right-angle corner. The experiments are performed in a 13 m rotating tank filled with a two-layer system. Kelvin waves were generated by lifting a dam behind which there is a thicker upper-layer. First, by checking that the celerity and shape have the correct amplitude dependence, it is demonstrated that it is possible to generate internal solitary Kelvin waves in a semi-infinite domain, both for weak and strong rotation. Second, we made detailed observations of repeated copies of a low amplitude solitary Kelvin wave reflected by a right-angle corner. There are both (i) a transmitted solitary Kelvin wave propagating along the reflecting wall; and (ii) some Poincaré waves radiating from the corner region. There is always a strong decay in amplitude due to the generation of the Poincard waves at the right-angle corner.