Seiche Motion in Lakes

Introduction-What is a seiche?

A seiche is a natural oscillation in a basin of water of any size, sort of a “sloshing” motion.  One can easily see seiches in action in your own bathtub.  When the water is disturbed, a back and forth motion in the water is developed.  This phenomena also occurs in our local lakes, yet is not as easy to see with the naked eye because the time it takes for a large basin of water like a lake to go back and forth in one motion can take minutes to hours. 

In order for a seiche to begin, something has to disturb the water’s surface.  Natural causes of seiches include wind, atmospheric pressure disturbances, and ambient water motion to open harbors (such as tides, storm surges, tsunamis, etc.). 

For my project, I wanted to somehow model the seiches of more complex basins, such as lakes.  I wanted to see what effect a narrow channel would have on the behavior of seiches.

Amanda Stone—University of Wisconsin College of Engineering