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 semi‐implicit finite difference method for non‐hydrostatic,free‐surface flows

In this paper a semi‐implicit finite difference model for non‐hydrostatic, free‐surface flows is analyzed and discussed. It is shown that the present algorithm is generally more accurate than recently developed models for quasi‐hydrostatic flows. The governing equations are the free‐surface Navier–Stokes equations defined on a general, irregular domain of arbitrary scale. The momentum equations, the incompressibility condition and the equation for the free‐surface are integrated by a semi‐implicit algorithm in such a fashion that the resulting numerical solution is mass conservative and unconditionally stable with respect to the gravity wave speed, wind stress, vertical viscosity and bottom friction. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

High‐order compact numerical schemes for non‐hydrostatic free surface flows

The development of a numerical scheme for non‐hydrostatic free surface flows is described with the objective of improving the resolution characteristics of existing solution methods. The model uses a high‐order compact finite difference method for spatial discretization on a collocated grid and the standard, explicit, single step, four‐stage, fourth‐order Runge–Kutta method for temporal discretization. The Cartesian coordinate system was used. The model requires the solution of two Poisson equations at each time‐step and tridiagonal matrices for each derivative at each of the four stages in a time‐step. Third‐ and fourth‐order accurate boundaries for the flow variables have been developed including the top non‐hydrostatic pressure boundary. The results demonstrate that numerical dissipation which has been a problem with many similar models that are second‐order accurate is practically eliminated. A high accuracy is obtained for the flow variables including the non‐hydrostatic pressure. The accuracy of the model has been tested in numerical experiments. In all cases where analytical solutions are available, both phase errors and amplitude errors are very small. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Three‐dimensional numerical modelling of free surface flows with non‐hydrostatic pressure

A three‐dimensional numerical model is developed for incompressible free surface flows. The model is based on the unsteady Reynolds‐averaged Navier–Stokes equations with a non‐hydrostatic pressure distribution being incorporated in the model. The governing equations are solved in the conventional sigma co‐ordinate system, with a semi‐implicit time discretization. A fractional step method is used to enable the pressure to be decomposed into its hydrostatic and hydrodynamic components. At every time step one five‐diagonal system of equations is solved to compute the water elevations and then the hydrodynamic pressure is determined from a pressure Poisson equation. The model is applied to three examples to simulate unsteady free surface flows where non‐hydrostatic pressures have a considerable effect on the velocity field. Emphasis is focused on applying the model to wave problems. Two of the examples are about modelling small amplitude waves where the hydrostatic approximation and long wave theory are not valid. The other example is the wind‐induced circulation in a closed basin. The numerical solutions are compared with the available analytical solutions for small amplitude wave theory and very good agreement is obtained. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An implicit three‐dimensional fully non‐hydrostatic model for free‐surface flows

An implicit method is developed for solving the complete three‐dimensional (3D) Navier–Stokes equations. The algorithm is based upon a staggered finite difference Crank‐Nicholson scheme on a Cartesian grid. A new top‐layer pressure treatment and a partial cell bottom treatment are introduced so that the 3D model is fully non‐hydrostatic and is free of any hydrostatic assumption. A domain decomposition method is used to segregate the resulting 3D matrix system into a series of two‐dimensional vertical plane problems, for each of which a block tri‐diagonal system can be directly solved for the unknown horizontal velocity. Numerical tests including linear standing waves, nonlinear sloshing motions, and progressive wave interactions with uneven bottoms are performed. It is found that the model is capable to simulate accurately a range of free‐surface flow problems using a very small number of vertical layers (e.g. two–four layers). The developed model is second‐order accuracy in time and space and is unconditionally stable; and it can be effectively used to model 3D surface wave motions. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A semi‐implicit finite element model for non‐hydrostatic (dispersive) surface waves

The objective of this research is to develop a model that will adequately simulate the dynamics of tsunami propagating across the continental shelf. In practical terms, a large spatial domain with high resolution is required so that source areas and runup areas are adequately resolved. Hence efficiency of the model is a major issue. The three‐dimensional Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes equations are depth‐averaged to yield a set of equations that are similar to the shallow water equations but retain the non‐hydrostatic pressure terms. This approach differs from the development of the Boussinesq equations where pressure is eliminated in favour of high‐order velocity and geometry terms. The model gives good results for several test problems including an oscillating basin, propagation of a solitary wave, and a wave transformation over a bar. The hydrostatic and non‐hydrostatic versions of the model are compared for a large‐scale problem where a fault rupture generates a tsunami on the New Zealand continental shelf. The model efficiency is also very good and execution times are about a factor of 1.8 to 5 slower than the standard shallow water model, depending on problem size. Moreover, there are at least two methods to increase model accuracy when warranted: choosing a more optimal vertical interpolation function, and dividing the problem into layers. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A numerical method for the determination of weakly non‐hydrostatic non‐linear free surface wave propagation

A numerical method is described that may be used to determine the propagation characteristics of weakly non‐hydrostatic non‐linear free surface waves over a general, bottom topography. In shallow water of constant undisturbed depth, such waves are equivalent to the familiar cnoidal waves characterized by sharp crests and relatively flat troughs. For a certain range of parameters, these propagate without change of form by virtue of the weakly non‐hydrostatic balance in the vertical momentum equation. Effectively, this counters the tendency for the non‐linearity in a purely hydrostatic theory to lead to a continuously deforming surface wave profile. The realistic representation furnished by cnoidal wave theory of free surface waves in the shallow near‐shore zone has led to its utilization in evaluating their propagation characteristics. Nonetheless, the classic analytical theory is inapplicable to the case of wave propagation over a sloping beach or off‐shore sand bar topography. Under these conditions, a local change in form of the surface wave profile is anticipated before the waves break and knowing this is required in order to evaluate fully the propagation process. The efficacy of the numerical method is first demonstrated by comparing the solution for water of constant depth with the evaluation of the analytical solution expressed in terms of the Jacobian elliptic function cn. The general method described in the paper is then illustrated by experiments to determine the change in profile of weakly non‐hydrostatic non‐linear surface waves propagating over bed forms representative of those found in shallow coastal seas. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An implicit two‐dimensional non‐hydrostatic model for free‐surface flows

An implicit finite volume model in sigma coordinate system is developed to simulate two‐dimensional (2D) vertical free surface flows, deploying a non‐hydrostatic pressure distribution. The algorithm is based on a projection method which solves the complete 2D Navier–Stokes equations in two steps. First the pressure term in the momentum equations is excluded and the resultant advection–diffusion equations are solved. In the second step the continuity and the momentum equation with only the pressure terms are solved to give a block tri‐diagonal system of equation with pressure as the unknown. This system can be solved by a direct matrix solver without iteration. A new implicit treatment of non‐hydrostatic pressure, similar to the lower layers is applied to the top layer which makes the model free of any hydrostatic pressure assumption all through the water column. This treatment enables the model to evaluate both free surface elevation and wave celerity more accurately. A series of numerical tests including free‐surface flows with significant vertical accelerations and nonlinear behaviour in shoaling zone are performed. Comparison between numerical results, analytical solutions and experimental data demonstrates a satisfactory performance. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A 3‐D non‐hydrostatic pressure model for small amplitude free surface flows

A three‐dimensional, non‐hydrostatic pressure, numerical model with k–ε equations for small amplitude free surface flows is presented. By decomposing the pressure into hydrostatic and non‐hydrostatic parts, the numerical model uses an integrated time step with two fractional steps. In the first fractional step the momentum equations are solved without the non‐hydrostatic pressure term, using Newton's method in conjunction with the generalized minimal residual (GMRES) method so that most terms can be solved implicitly. This method only needs the product of a Jacobian matrix and a vector rather than the Jacobian matrix itself, limiting the amount of storage and significantly decreasing the overall computational time required. In the second step the pressure–Poisson equation is solved iteratively with a preconditioned linear GMRES method. It is shown that preconditioning reduces the central processing unit (CPU) time dramatically. In order to prevent pressure oscillations which may arise in collocated grid arrangements, transformed velocities are defined at cell faces by interpolating velocities at grid nodes. After the new pressure field is obtained, the intermediate velocities, which are calculated from the previous fractional step, are updated. The newly developed model is verified against analytical solutions, published results, and experimental data, with excellent agreement. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A new fully non‐hydrostatic 3D free surface flow model for water wave motions

A new fully non‐hydrostatic model is presented by simulating three‐dimensional free surface flow on a vertical boundary‐fitted coordinate system. A projection method, known as pressure correction technique, is employed to solve the incompressible Euler equations. A new grid arrangement is proposed under a horizontal Cartesian grid framework and vertical boundary‐fitted coordinate system. The resulting model is relatively simple. Moreover, the discretized Poisson equation for pressure correction is symmetric and positive definite, and thus it can be solved effectively by the preconditioned conjugate gradient method. Several test cases of surface wave motion are used to demonstrate the capabilities and numerical stability of the model. Comparisons between numerical results and analytical or experimental data are presented. It is shown that the proposed model could accurately and effectively resolve the motion of short waves with only two layers, where wave shoaling, nonlinearity, dispersion, refraction, and diffraction phenomena occur. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Non‐hydrostatic 3D free surface layer‐structured finite volume model for short wave propagation

In this paper a layer‐structured finite volume model for non‐hydrostatic 3D environmental free surface flow is presented and applied to several test cases, which involve the computation of gravity waves. The 3D unsteady momentum and mass conservation equations are solved in a collocated grid made of polyhedrons, which are built from a 2D horizontal unstructured mesh, by just adding several horizontal layers. The mesh built in such a way is unstructured in the horizontal plane, but structured in the vertical direction. This procedure simplifies the mesh generation and at the same time it produces a well‐oriented mesh for stratified flows, which are common in environmental problems. The model reduces to a 2D depth‐averaged shallow water model when one single layer is defined in the mesh. Pressure–velocity coupling is achieved by the Semi‐Implicit Method for Pressure‐Linked Equations algorithm, using Rhie–Chow interpolation to stabilize the pressure field. An attractive property of the model proposed is the ability to compute the propagation of short waves with a rather coarse vertical discretization. Several test cases are solved in order to show the capabilities and numerical stability of the model, including a rectangular free oscillating basin, a radially symmetric wave, short wave propagation over a 1D bar, solitary wave runup on a vertical wall, and short wave refraction over a 2D shoal. In all the cases the numerical results are compared either with analytical or with experimental data. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A two‐dimensional vertical non‐hydrostatic σ model with an implicit method for free‐surface flows

An implicit finite difference model in the σ co‐ordinate system is developed for non‐hydrostatic, two‐dimensional vertical plane free‐surface flows. To accurately simulate interaction of free‐surface flows with uneven bottoms, the unsteady Navier–Stokes equations and the free‐surface boundary condition are solved simultaneously in a regular transformed σ domain using a fully implicit method in two steps. First, the vertical velocity and pressure are expressed as functions of horizontal velocity. Second, substituting these relationship into the horizontal momentum equation provides a block tri‐diagonal matrix system with the unknown of horizontal velocity, which can be solved by a direct matrix solver without iteration. A new treatment of non‐hydrostatic pressure condition at the top‐layer cell is developed and found to be important for resolving the phase of wave propagation. Additional terms introduced by the σ co‐ordinate transformation are discretized appropriately in order to obtain accurate and stable numerical results. The developed model has been validated by several tests involving free‐surface flows with strong vertical accelerations and non‐linear waves interacting with uneven bottoms. Comparisons among numerical results, analytical solutions and experimental data show the capability of the model to simulate free‐surface flow problems. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Further experiences with computing non‐hydrostatic free‐surface flows involving water waves

A semi‐implicit, staggered finite volume technique for non‐hydrostatic, free‐surface flow governed by the incompressible Euler equations is presented that has a proper balance between accuracy, robustness and computing time. The procedure is intended to be used for predicting wave propagation in coastal areas. The splitting of the pressure into hydrostatic and non‐hydrostatic components is utilized. To ease the task of discretization and to enhance the accuracy of the scheme, a vertical boundary‐fitted co‐ordinate system is employed, permitting more resolution near the bottom as well as near the free surface. The issue of the implementation of boundary conditions is addressed. As recently proposed by the present authors, the Keller‐box scheme for accurate approximation of frequency wave dispersion requiring a limited vertical resolution is incorporated. The both locally and globally mass conserved solution is achieved with the aid of a projection method in the discrete sense. An efficient preconditioned Krylov subspace technique to solve the discretized Poisson equation for pressure correction with an unsymmetric matrix is treated. Some numerical experiments to show the accuracy, robustness and efficiency of the proposed method are presented. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Semi‐Lagrangian advection on a spherical geodesic grid

A simple and efficient numerical method for solving the advection equation on the spherical surface is presented. To overcome the well‐known ‘pole problem’ related to the polar singularity of spherical coordinates, the space discretization is performed on a geodesic grid derived by a uniform triangulation of the sphere; the time discretization uses a semi‐Lagrangian approach. These two choices, efficiently combined in a substepping procedure, allow us to easily determine the departure points of the characteristic lines, avoiding any computationally expensive tree‐search. Moreover, suitable interpolation procedures on such geodesic grid are presented and compared. The performance of the method in terms of accuracy and efficiency is assessed on two standard test cases: solid‐body rotation and a deformation flow. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A semi‐Lagrangian level set method for incompressible Navier–Stokes equations with free surface

In this paper, we formulate a level set method in the framework of finite elements‐semi‐Lagrangian methods to compute the solution of the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations with free surface. In our formulation, we use a quasi‐monotone semi‐Lagrangian scheme, which is both unconditionally stable and essentially non oscillatory, to compute the advective terms in the Navier–Stokes equations, the transport equation and the equation of the reinitialization stage for the level set function. The method we propose is quite robust and flexible with regard to the mesh and the geometry of the domain, as well as the magnitude of the Reynolds number. We illustrate the performance of the method in several examples, which range from a benchmark problem to test the volume conservation property of the method to the flow past a NACA0012 foil at high Reynolds number. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An implicit numerical algorithm for solving non‐hydrostatic free‐surface flow problems

Details are given of the development of a two‐dimensional vertical numerical model for simulating unsteady free‐surface flows, using a non‐hydrostatic pressure distribution. In this model, the Reynolds equations and the kinematic free‐surface boundary condition are solved simultaneously, so that the water surface elevation can be integrated into the solution and solved for, together with the velocity and pressure fields. An efficient numerical algorithm has been developed, deploying implicit parameters similar to those used in the Crank–Nicholson method, and generating a block tri‐diagonal algebraic system of equations. The model has been applied to simulate a range of unsteady flow problems involving relatively strong vertical accelerations. The results show that the numerical algorithm described is able to produce accurate predictions and is also easy to apply. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An efficient and accurate non‐hydrostatic model with embedded Boussinesq‐type like equations for surface wave modeling

A novel approach that embeds the Boussinesq‐type like equations into an implicit non‐hydrostatic model (NHM) is developed. Instead of using an integration approach, Boussinesq‐type like equations with a reference velocity under a virtual grid system are introduced to analytically obtain an analytical form of pressure distribution at the top layer. To determine the size of vertical layers in the model, a top‐layer control technique is proposed and the reference location is employed to optimize linear wave dispersion property. The efficiency and accuracy of this NHM with Boussinesq‐type like equations (NHM‐BTE) are critically examined through four free‐surface wave examples. Overall model results show that NHM‐BTE using only two vertical layers is capable of accurately simulating highly dispersive wave motion and wave transformation over irregular bathymetry. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Free‐surface flow over a semi‐circular obstruction

The fully non‐linear free‐surface flow over a semi‐circular bottom obstruction was studied numerically in two dimensions using a mixed Eulerian–Lagrangian formulation. The problem was solved in the time domain that allows the prediction of a number of transient phenomena, such as the generation of upstream advancing solitary waves, as well as the simulation of wave breaking. A parametric study was performed for a range of values of the depth‐based Froude number up to 2.5 and non‐dimensional obstacle heights, α up to 0.9. When wave breaking does not occur, three distinct flow regimes were identified: subcritical, transcritical and supercritical. When breaking occurs it may be of any type: spilling, plunging or surging. In addition, for values of the Froude number close to 1, the upstream solitary waves break. A systematic study was undertaken to define the boundaries of each type of breaking and non‐breaking pattern and to determine the drag and lift coefficients, free‐surface profile characteristics and transient behavior. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A semi‐implicit scheme for 3D free surface flows with high‐order velocity reconstruction on unstructured Voronoi meshes

In this paper, we present a computationally efficient semi‐implicit scheme for the simulation of three‐dimensional hydrostatic free surface flow problems on staggered unstructured Voronoi meshes. For each polygonal control volume, the pressure is defined in the cell center, whereas the discrete velocity field is given by the normal velocity component at the cell faces. A piecewise high‐order polynomial vector velocity field is then reconstructed from the scalar normal velocities at the cell faces by using a new high‐order constrained least‐squares reconstruction operator. The reconstructed high‐order piecewise polynomial velocity field is used for trajectory integration in a semi‐Lagrangian approach to discretize the nonlinear convective terms in the governing PDE. For that purpose, a high‐order Taylor method is used as ODE integrator. The resulting semi‐implicit algorithm is extensively validated on a large set of different academic test problems with exact analytical solution and is finally applied to a real‐world engineering problem consisting of a curved channel upstream of two micro‐turbines of a hydroelectric power plant. For this realistic case, some experimental reference data are available from field measurements. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.