J Austral Math Soc Ser B 34 pp377--391, 1993.
(Received 13 March 1991; revised 8 August 1991)
When a line sink is placed beneath the free surface of an otherwise quiescent fluid of infinite depth, two different
flow types are now known to be possible. One type of flow involves the fluid being drawn down toward the sink, and in
the other type, a stagnation point forms at the surface immediately above the position of the sink.
This paper investigates the second of these two flow types, which involves a free-surface stagnation
point. The effects of surface tension are included, and even when small, these are shown to have a very significant
effect on the overall solution behaviour. We demonstrate by direct numerical calculation that there are regions of
genuine non-uniqueness in the nonlinear solution, when the surface-tension parameter does not vanish. In addition, an
asymptotic solution valid for small Froude number is derived.
Last Modified: Mon Jul 10 11:17:56 2000