The paper describes a new formulation of the theory of long shallow water waves, which is based on the fundamental assumption that vertical material lines of fluid remain vertical during the entire motion. To make the problem consistent from the point of view of physics the case of waves in a flume due to the motion of a piston type generator is considered. At the piston the material line of water particles remains vertical during the entire motion and thus the generation follows the assumption in the description of the motion of water in the flume. Wave equations are derived with the help of a variational formulation of the problem in a material description. The Lagrangian is the difference between the kinetic and potential energies of the fluid and the mechanical system that describes a very simplified wave generator. The basic assumption simplifies the geometry of the displacement field. The definitions of generalized forces follow from variational calculus. The procedure ensures that the energy is preserved. A simple discrete formulation of the problem is based on the finite element method and the corresponding approximate expressions for energies.
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