An eigenvector‐based linear reconstruction scheme for the shallow‐water equations on two‐dimensional unstructured meshes

This paper presents a new approach to MUSCL reconstruction for solving the shallow‐water equations on two‐dimensional unstructured meshes. The approach takes advantage of the particular structure of the shallow‐water equations. Indeed, their hyperbolic nature allows the flow variables to be expressed as a linear combination of the eigenvectors of the system. The particularity of the shallow‐water equations is that the coefficients of this combination only depend upon the water depth. Reconstructing only the water depth with second‐order accuracy and using only a first‐order reconstruction for the flow velocity proves to be as accurate as the classical MUSCL approach. The method also appears to be more robust in cases with very strong depth gradients such as the propagation of a wave on a dry bed. Since only one reconstruction is needed (against three reconstructions in the MUSCL approach) the EVR method is shown to be 1.4–5 times as fast as the classical MUSCL scheme, depending on the computational application. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.