Long time well-posedness of Whitham–Boussinesq systems

Consideration is given to three different full dispersion Boussinesq systems arising as asymptotic models in the bi-directional propagation of weakly nonlinear surface waves in shallow water. We prove that, under a non-cavitation condition on the initial data, these three systems are well-posed on a time scale of order $\mathcal{O}(\frac{1}{\varepsilon })$, where ɛ is a small parameter measuring the weak nonlinearity of the waves. For one of the systems, this result is new even for short time. The two other systems involve surface tension, and for one of them, the non-cavitation condition has to be sharpened when the surface tension is small. The proof relies on suitable symmetrizers and the classical theory of hyperbolic systems. However, we have to track the small parameters carefully in the commutator estimates to get the long time well-posedness. Finally, combining our results with the recent ones of Emerald provide a full justification of these systems as water wave models in a larger range of regimes than the classical (a, b, c, d)-Boussinesq systems.