A well-balanced van Leer-type numerical scheme for shallow water equations with variable topography

A well-balanced van Leer-type numerical scheme for the shallow water equations with variable topography is presented. The model involves a nonconservative term, which often makes standard schemes difficult to approximate solutions in certain regions. The construction of our scheme is based on exact solutions in computational form of local Riemann problems. Numerical tests are conducted, where comparisons between this van Leer-type scheme and a Godunov-type scheme are provided. Data for the tests are taken in both the subcritical region as well as supercritical region. Especially, tests for resonant cases where the exact solutions contain coinciding waves are also investigated. All numerical tests show that each of these two methods can give a good accuracy, while the van Leer -type scheme gives a better accuracy than the Godunov-type scheme. Furthermore, it is shown that the van Leer-type scheme is also well-balanced in the sense that it can capture exactly stationary contact discontinuity waves.