An unstructured finite volume model for dam‐break floods with wet/dry fronts over complex topography

A robust, well‐balanced, unstructured, Godunov‐type finite volume model has been developed in order to simulate two‐dimensional dam‐break floods over complex topography with wetting and drying. The model is based on the nonlinear shallow water equations in hyperbolic conservation form. The inviscid fluxes are calculated using the HLLC approximate Riemann solver and a second‐order spatial accuracy is achieved by implementing the MUSCL reconstruction technique. To prevent numerical oscillations near shocks, slope‐limiting techniques are used for controlling the total variation of the reconstructed field. The model utilizes an explicit two‐stage Runge–Kutta method for time stepping, whereas implicit treatments for friction source terms. The novelties of the model include the flux correction terms and the water depth reconstruction method both for partially and fully submerged cells, and the wet/dry front treatments. The proposed flux correction terms combined with the water depth reconstruction method are necessary to balance the bed slope terms and flux gradient in the hydrostatical steady flow condition. Especially, this well‐balanced property is also preserved in partially submerged cells. It is found that the developed wet/dry front treatments and implicit scheme for friction source terms are stable. The model is tested against benchmark problems, laboratory experimental data, and realistic application related to dam‐break flood wave propagation over arbitrary topography. Numerical results show that the model performs satisfactorily with respect to its effectiveness and robustness and thus has bright application prospects. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluation of well‐balanced bore‐capturing schemes for 2D wetting and drying processes

We consider numerical solutions of the two‐dimensional non‐linear shallow water equations with a bed slope source term. These equations are well‐suited for the study of many geophysical phenomena, including coastal engineering where wetting and drying processes are commonly observed. To accurately describe the evolution of moving shorelines over strongly varying topography, we first investigate two well‐balanced methods of Godunov‐type, relying on the resolution of non‐homogeneous Riemann problems. But even if these schemes were previously proved to be efficient in many simulations involving occurrences of dry zones, they fail to compute accurately moving shorelines. From this, we investigate a new model, called SURF_WB, especially designed for the simulation of wave transformations over strongly varying topography. This model relies on a recent reconstruction method for the treatment of the bed‐slope source term and is able to handle strong variations of topography and to preserve the steady states at rest. In addition, the use of the recent VFRoe‐ncv Riemann solver leads to a robust treatment of wetting and drying phenomena. An adapted ‘second order’ reconstruction generates accurate bore‐capturing abilities.This scheme is validated against several analytical solutions, involving varying topography, time dependent moving shorelines and convergences toward steady states. This model should have an impact in the prediction of 2D moving shorelines over strongly irregular topography. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exactly well‐balanced positivity preserving nonstaggered central scheme for open‐channel flows

In this paper, we construct and study an exactly well‐balanced positivity‐preserving nonstaggered central scheme for shallow water flows in open channels with irregular geometry and nonflat bottom topography. We introduce a novel discretization of the source term based on hydrostatic reconstruction to obtain the exactly well‐balanced property for the still water steady‐state solution even in the presence of wetting and drying transitions. The positivity‐preserving property of the cross‐sectional wet area is obtained by using a modified “draining" time‐step technique. The current scheme is also Riemann‐solver‐free. Several classical problems of open‐channel flows are used to test these properties. Numerical results confirm that the current scheme is robust, exactly well‐balanced and positivity‐preserving.     

An unstructured finite‐volume method for coupled models of suspended sediment and bed load transport in shallow‐water flows

The aim of this work is to develop a well‐balanced finite‐volume method for the accurate numerical solution of the equations governing suspended sediment and bed load transport in two‐dimensional shallow‐water flows. The modelling system consists of three coupled model components: (i) the shallow‐water equations for the hydrodynamical model; (ii) a transport equation for the dispersion of suspended sediments; and (iii) an Exner equation for the morphodynamics. These coupled models form a hyperbolic system of conservation laws with source terms. The proposed finite‐volume method consists of a predictor stage for the discretization of gradient terms and a corrector stage for the treatment of source terms. The gradient fluxes are discretized using a modified Roe's scheme using the sign of the Jacobian matrix in the coupled system. A well‐balanced discretization is used for the treatment of source terms. In this paper, we also employ an adaptive procedure in the finite‐volume method by monitoring the concentration of suspended sediments in the computational domain during its transport process. The method uses unstructured meshes and incorporates upwinded numerical fluxes and slope limiters to provide sharp resolution of steep sediment concentrations and bed load gradients that may form in the approximate solutions. Details are given on the implementation of the method, and numerical results are presented for two idealized test cases, which demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of the method and its applicability in predicting dam‐break flows over erodible sediment beds. The method is also applied to a sediment transport problem in the Nador lagoon.Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Well‐balanced positivity preserving central‐upwind scheme for the shallow water system with friction terms

Shallow water models are widely used to describe and study free‐surface water flow. While in some practical applications the bottom friction does not have much influence on the solutions, there are still many applications, where the bottom friction is important. In particular, the friction terms will play a significant role when the depth of the water is very small. In this paper, we study shallow water equations with friction terms and develop a semi‐discrete second‐order central‐upwind scheme that is capable of exactly preserving physically relevant steady states and maintaining the positivity of the water depth. The presence of the friction terms increases the level of complexity in numerical simulations as the underlying semi‐discrete system becomes stiff when the water depth is small. We therefore implement an efficient semi‐implicit Runge‐Kutta time integration method that sustains the well‐balanced and sign preserving properties of the semi‐discrete scheme. We test the designed method on a number of one‐dimensional and two‐dimensional examples that demonstrate robustness and high resolution of the proposed numerical approach. The data in the last numerical example correspond to the laboratory experiments reported in [L. Cea, M. Garrido, and J. Puertas, Journal of Hydrology, 382 (2010), pp. 88–102], designed to mimic the rain water drainage in urban areas containing houses. Since the rain water depth is typically several orders of magnitude smaller than the height of the houses, we develop a special technique, which helps to achieve a remarkable agreement between the numerical and experimental results. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Well‐balancing issues related to the RKDG2 scheme for the shallow water equations

Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) finite element methods have salient features that are mainly highlighted by their locality, their easiness in balancing the flux and source term gradients and their component‐wise structure. In the light of this, this paper aims to provide insights into the well‐balancing property of a second‐order Runge–Kutta Discontinuous Galerkin (RKDG2) method. For this purpose, a Godunov‐type RKDG2 method is presented for solving the shallow water equations. The scheme is based on local DG linear approximations and does not entail any special treatment of the source terms in order to achieve well‐balanced numerical results. The performance of the present RKDG2 scheme in reproducing conserved solutions for both free surface and discharge over strongly irregular topography is demonstrated by applying to several hydraulic benchmarks. Meanwhile, the effects of different slope limiting procedures on the well‐balancing property are investigated and discussed. This work may provide useful guidelines for developing a well‐balanced RKDG2 numerical scheme for shallow water flow simulation. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A finite volume shock‐capturing solver of the fully coupled shallow water‐sediment equations

This paper describes a numerical solver of well‐balanced, 2D depth‐averaged shallow water‐sediment equations. The equations permit variable horizontal fluid density and are designed to model water‐sediment flow over a mobile bed. A Godunov‐type, Harten–Lax–van Leer contact (HLLC) finite volume scheme is used to solve the fully coupled system of hyperbolic conservation laws that describe flow hydrodynamics, suspended sediment transport, bedload transport and bed morphological change. Dependent variables are specially selected to handle the presence of the variable density property in the mathematical formulation. The model is verified against analytical and semi‐analytical solutions for bedload transport and suspended sediment transport, respectively. The well‐balanced property of the equations is verified for a variable‐density dam break flow over discontinuous bathymetry. Simulations of an idealised dam‐break flow over an erodible bed are in excellent agreement with previously published results, validating the ability of the model to capture the complex interaction between rapidly varying flow and an erodible bed and validating the eigenstructure of the system of variable‐density governing equations. Flow hydrodynamics and final bed topography of a laboratory‐based 2D partial dam breach over a mobile bed are satisfactorily reproduced by the numerical model. Comparison of the final bed topographies, computed for two distinct sediment transport methods, highlights the sensitivity of shallow water‐sediment models to the choice of closure relationships. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A robust high‐resolution finite volume scheme for the simulation of long waves over complex domains

The propagation, runup and rundown of long surface waves are numerically investigated, initially in one dimension, using a well‐balanced high‐resolution finite volume scheme. A conservative form of the nonlinear shallow water equations with source terms is solved numerically using a high‐resolution Godunov‐type explicit scheme coupled with Roe's approximate Riemann solver. The scheme is also extended to handle two‐dimensional complex domains. The numerical difficulties related to the presence of the topography source terms in the model equations along with the appearance of the wet/dry fronts are properly treated and extended. The resulting numerical model accurately describes breaking waves as bores or hydraulic jumps and conserves volume across flow discontinuities. Numerical results show very good agreement with previously presented analytical or asymptotic solutions as well as with experimental benchmark data. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A ‘well‐balanced’ finite volume scheme for blood flow simulation

We are interested in simulating blood flow in arteries with a one‐dimensional model. Thanks to recent developments in the analysis of hyperbolic system of conservation laws (in the Saint‐Venant shallow water equations context) we will perform a simple finite volume scheme. We focus on conservation properties of this scheme, which were not previously considered. To emphasize the necessity of this scheme, we present how a too simple numerical scheme may induce spurious flows when the basic static shape of the radius changes. On the contrary, the proposed scheme is ‘well‐balanced’: it preserves equilibria of Q = 0. Then examples of analytical or linearized solutions with and without viscous damping are presented to validate the calculations. The influence of abrupt change of basic radius is emphasized in the case of an aneurism. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A well‐balanced weighted essentially non‐oscillatory scheme for pollutant transport in shallow water

In this paper, a well‐balanced finite difference weighted essentially non‐oscillatory scheme is presented for modeling transport and diffusion of pollutant in shallow water flows. The scheme balances exactly the flux gradients and the source terms. Extensive one‐dimensional and two‐dimensional numerical experiments on uniform and curvilinear meshes strongly suggest that high resolution results are achieved for both water depth and pollutant concentration. The scheme is efficient and robust and can be applied to practical numerical simulation of pollutant transport phenomena in shallow water flows. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A well‐balanced upstream flux‐splitting finite‐volume scheme for shallow‐water flow simulations with irregular bed topography

This study extends the upstream flux‐splitting finite‐volume (UFF) scheme to shallow water equations with source terms. Coupling the hydrostatic reconstruction method (HRM) with the UFF scheme achieves a resultant numerical scheme that adequately balances flux gradients and source terms. The proposed scheme is validated in three benchmark problems and applied to flood flows in the natural/irregular river with bridge pier obstructions. The results of the simulations are in satisfactory agreement with the available analytical solutions, experimental data and field measurements. Comparisons of the present results with those obtained by the surface gradient method (SGM) demonstrate the superior stability and higher accuracy of the HRM. The stability test results also show that the HRM requires less CPU time (up to 60%) than the SGM. The proposed well‐balanced UFF scheme is accurate, stable and efficient to solve flow problems involving irregular bed topography. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Shoreline tracking and implicit source terms for a well balanced inundation model

The HyFlux2 model has been developed to simulate severe inundation scenario due to dam break, flash flood and tsunami‐wave run‐up. The model solves the conservative form of the two‐dimensional shallow water equations using the finite volume method. The interface flux is computed by a Flux Vector Splitting method for shallow water equations based on a Godunov‐type approach. A second‐order scheme is applied to the water surface level and velocity, providing results with high accuracy and assuring the balance between fluxes and sources also for complex bathymetry and topography. Physical models are included to deal with bottom steps and shorelines. The second‐order scheme together with the shoreline‐tracking method and the implicit source term treatment makes the model well balanced in respect to mass and momentum conservation laws, providing reliable and robust results. The developed model is validated in this paper with a 2D numerical test case and with the Okushiri tsunami run up problem. It is shown that the HyFlux2 model is able to model inundation problems, with a satisfactory prediction of the major flow characteristics such as water depth, water velocity, flood extent, and flood‐wave arrival time. The results provided by the model are of great importance for the risk assessment and management. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A high‐order PIC method for advection‐dominated flow with application to shallow water waves

A hybrid Eulerian‐Lagrangian particle‐in‐cell–type numerical method is developed for the solution of advection‐dominated flow problems. Particular attention is given over to the high‐order transfer of flow properties from the particles to the grid. For smooth flows, the method presented is of formal high‐order accuracy in space. The method is applied to solve the nonlinear shallow water equations resulting in a new, and novel, shock capturing shallow water solver. The approach is able to simulate complex shallow water flows, which can contain an arbitrary number of discontinuities. Both trivial and nontrivial bottom topography is considered, and it is shown that the new scheme is inherently well balanced, exactly satisfying the ‐property. The scheme is verified against several one‐dimensional benchmark shallow water problems. These include cases that involve transcritical flow regimes, shock waves, and nontrivial bathymetry. In all the test cases presented, very good results are obtained.     

A dual‐weighted trust‐region adaptive POD 4‐D Var applied to a finite‐volume shallow water equations model on the sphere

In this paper we study solutions of an inverse problem for a global shallow water model controlling its initial conditions specified from the 40‐yr ECMWF Re‐analysis (ERA‐40) data sets, in the presence of full or incomplete observations being assimilated in a time interval (window of assimilation) with or without background error covariance terms. As an extension of the work by Chen et al. (Int. J. Numer. Meth. Fluids 2009), we attempt to obtain a reduced order model of the above inverse problem, based on proper orthogonal decomposition (POD), referred to as POD 4D‐Var for a finite volume global shallow water equation model based on the Lin–Rood flux‐form semi‐Lagrangian semi‐implicit time integration scheme. Different approaches of POD implementation for the reduced inverse problem are compared, including a dual‐weighted method for snapshot selection coupled with a trust‐region POD adaptivity approach. Numerical results with various observational densities and background error covariance operator are also presented. The POD 4‐D Var model results combined with the trust‐region adaptivity exhibit similarity in terms of various error metrics to the full 4D Var results, but are obtained using a significantly lesser number of minimization iterations and require lesser CPU time. Based on our previous and current work, we conclude that POD 4‐D Var certainly warrants further studies, with promising potential of its extension to operational 3‐D numerical weather prediction models. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Three‐dimensional modeling of non‐hydrostatic free‐surface flows on unstructured grids

A three‐dimensional numerical model is presented for the simulation of unsteady non‐hydrostatic shallow water flows on unstructured grids using the finite volume method. The free surface variations are modeled by a characteristics‐based scheme, which simulates sub‐critical and super‐critical flows. Three‐dimensional velocity components are considered in a collocated arrangement with a σ‐coordinate system. A special treatment of the pressure term is developed to avoid the water surface oscillations. Convective and diffusive terms are approximated explicitly, and an implicit discretization is used for the pressure term to ensure exact mass conservation. The unstructured grid in the horizontal direction and the σ coordinate in the vertical direction facilitate the use of the model in complicated geometries. Solution of the non‐hydrostatic equations enables the model to simulate short‐period waves and vertically circulating flows. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A kinetic interpretation of the section‐averaged Saint‐Venant system for natural river hydraulics

The classical Saint‐Venant system is well suited for the modeling of dam breaks, hydraulic jumps, reservoir emptying, flooding etc. For many applications, the extension of the Saint‐Venant system to the case of non‐rectangular channels is necessary and this section‐averaged Saint‐Venant system exhibits additional source terms. The main difficulty of these equations consists of the discretization of these source terms. In this paper we propose a kinetic interpretation for the section averaged Saint‐Venant system and derive an associated numerical scheme. The numerical scheme—2nd order in space and time—preserves the positivity of the water height, and is well‐balanced. Numerical results including comparisons with analytic and experimental test problems illustrate the accuracy and the robustness of the numerical algorithm. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive finite volume methods with well‐balanced Riemann solvers for modeling floods in rugged terrain: Application to the Malpasset dam‐break flood (France, 1959)

The simulation of advancing flood waves over rugged topography, by solving the shallow‐water equations with well‐balanced high‐resolution finite volume methods and block‐structured dynamic adaptive mesh refinement (AMR), is described and validated in this paper. The efficiency of block‐structured AMR makes large‐scale problems tractable, and allows the use of accurate and stable methods developed for solving general hyperbolic problems on quadrilateral grids. Features indicative of flooding in rugged terrain, such as advancing wet–dry fronts and non‐stationary steady states due to balanced source terms from variable topography, present unique challenges and require modifications such as special Riemann solvers. A well‐balanced Riemann solver for inundation and general (non‐stationary) flow over topography is tested in this context. The difficulties of modeling floods in rugged terrain, and the rationale for and efficacy of using AMR and well‐balanced methods, are presented. The algorithms are validated by simulating the Malpasset dam‐break flood (France, 1959), which has served as a benchmark problem previously. Historical field data, laboratory model data and other numerical simulation results (computed on static fitted meshes) are shown for comparison. The methods are implemented in GEO CLAW , a subset of the open‐source CLAWPACK software. All the software is freely available at www.clawpack.org . Published in 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A new well‐balanced Hermite weighted essentially non‐oscillatory scheme for shallow water equations

Hermite weighted essentially non‐oscillatory (HWENO) methods were introduced in the literature, in the context of Euler equations for gas dynamics, to obtain high‐order accuracy schemes characterized by high compactness (e.g. Qiu and Shu, J. Comput. Phys. 2003; 193 :115). For example, classical fifth‐order weighted essentially non‐oscillatory (WENO) reconstructions are based on a five‐cell stencil whereas the corresponding HWENO reconstructions are based on a narrower three‐cell stencil. The compactness of the schemes allows easier treatment of the boundary conditions and of the internal interfaces. To obtain this compactness in HWENO schemes both the conservative variables and their first derivatives are evolved in time, whereas in the original WENO schemes only the conservative variables are evolved. In this work, an HWENO method is applied for the first time to the shallow water equations (SWEs), including the source term due to the bottom slope, to obtain a fourth‐order accurate well‐balanced compact scheme. Time integration is performed by a strong stability preserving the Runge–Kutta method, which is a five‐step and fourth‐order accurate method. Besides the classical SWE, the non‐homogeneous equations describing the time and space evolution of the conservative variable derivatives are considered here. An original, well‐balanced treatment of the source term involved in such equations is developed and tested. Several standard one‐dimensional test cases are used to verify the high‐order accuracy, the C‐property and the good resolution properties of the model. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A two‐dimensional numerical scheme of dry/wet fronts for the Saint‐Venant system of shallow water equations

We propose a new two‐dimensional numerical scheme to solve the Saint‐Venant system of shallow water equations in the presence of partially flooded cells. Our method is well balanced, positivity preserving, and handles dry states. The latter is ensured by using the draining time step technique in the time integration process, which guarantees non‐negative water depths. Unlike previous schemes, our technique does not generate high velocities at the dry/wet boundaries, which are responsible for small time step sizes and slow simulation runs. We prove that the new scheme preserves ‘lake at rest’ steady states and guarantees the positivity of the computed fluid depth in the partially flooded cells. We test the new scheme, along with another recent scheme from the literature, against the analytical solution for a parabolic basin and show the improved simulation performance of the new scheme for two real‐world scenarios. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A further work on multi‐phase two‐fluid approach for compressible multi‐phase flows

This paper is to continue our previous work Niu (Int. J. Numer. Meth. Fluids 2001; 36 :351–371) on solving a two‐fluid model for compressible liquid–gas flows using the AUSMDV scheme. We first propose a pressure–velocity‐based diffusion term originally derived from AUSMDV scheme Wada and Liou (SIAM J. Sci. Comput. 1997; 18 (3):633—657) to enhance its robustness. The scheme can be applied to gas and liquid fluids universally. We then employ the stratified flow model Chang and Liou (J. Comput. Physics 2007; 225 :240–873) for spatial discretization. By defining the fluids in different regions and introducing inter‐phasic force on cell boundary, the stratified flow model allows the conservation laws to be applied on each phase, and therefore, it is able to capture fluid discontinuities, such as the fluid interfaces and shock waves, accurately. Several benchmark tests are studied, including the Ransom's Faucet problem, 1D air–water shock tube problems, 2D shock‐water column and 2D shock‐bubble interaction problems. The results indicate that the incorporation of the new dissipation into AUSM⁺‐up scheme and the stratified flow model is simple, accurate and robust enough for the compressible multi‐phase flows. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.