A nonlinear calculations of interfacial waves generated by a moving ship and evaluation of the forces in the dead water problem

Fridtjof Nansen (1897) was the first to give a sufficiently precise, physical description of dead water so that the phenomenon could be given a scientific explanation. The initial systematics of the additional resistance on a ship moving in layered waters is credited to V. Wagnfrid Ekman. He was, by his supervisor Vilhelm Bjerknes, put to perform laboratory experiments on ship generated internal waves and measure the resulting force, and was able to explain the observations made by Nansen, see Ekman (1904). Recently, Ekman’s experiments have been reinvestigated using modern techniques, see Mercier et al. (2011).