| This thesis describes an analytical and numerical study of internal gravity waves in the atmosphere or ocean. Gravity waves result from the effects of gravitational forces and density stratification, and are frequently generated by fluid flow over topography (mountain). Previous related studies considered gravity waves generated by imposing a boundary condition in the form of a horizontally periodic monochromatic function at the lower boundary of a rectangular domain. Here a horizontally localized forcing, such as a Gaussian function, is used to represent an isolated mountain.;The problem is governed by two small parameters that define the height and width of the mountain. Depending on their magnitude the problem can be linear or nonlinear. Analytical techniques including Laplace and Fourier transforms, multiple scaling and asymptotic expansions are used to obtain approximate solutions of the governing linear and nonlinear equations. The analytical results are compared with the results of numerical simulations. |
