Overland flow modelling with the Shallow Water Equation using a well balanced numerical scheme: Adding efficiency or just more complexity?

In the last decades, more or less complex physically-based hydrological models, have been developed that solve the shallow water equations or their approximations using various numerical methods. Model users may not necessarily know the different hypothesis lying behind these development and simplifications, and it might therefore be difficult to judge if a code is well adapted to their objectives and test case configurations. This paper aims at comparing the predictive abilities of different models and evaluating potential gain by using advanced numerical scheme for modelling runoff. We present four different codes, each one based on either shallow water or kinematic waves equations, and using either finite volume or finite difference method. We compare these four numerical codes on different test cases allowing to emphasize their main strengths and weaknesses. Results show that, for relatively simple configurations, kinematic waves equations solved with finite volume method represent an interesting option. Nevertheless, as it appears to be limited in case of discontinuous topography or strong spatial heterogeneities, for these cases we advise the use of shallow water equations solved with the finite volume method

The Simple Finite Volume Lax-Wendroff Weighted Essentially Nonoscillatory Schemes for Shallow Water Equations with Bottom Topography

A Lax-Wendroff-type procedure with the high order finite volume simple weighted essentially nonoscillatory (SWENO) scheme is proposed to simulate the one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) shallow water equations with topography influence in source terms. The system of shallow water equations is discretized using the simple WENO scheme in space and Lax-Wendroff scheme in time. The idea of Lax-Wendroff time discretization can avoid part of characteristic decomposition and calculation of nonlinear weights. The type of simple WENO was first developed by Zhu and Qiu in 2016, which is more simple than classical WENO fashion. In order to maintain good, high resolution and nonoscillation for both continuous and discontinuous flow and suit problems with discontinuous bottom topography, we use the same idea of SWENO reconstruction for flux to treat the source term in prebalanced shallow water equations. A range of numerical examples are performed; as a result, comparing with classical WENO reconstruction and Runge-Kutta time discretization, the simple Lax-Wendroff WENO schemes can obtain the same accuracy order and escape nonphysical oscillation adjacent strong shock, while bringing less absolute truncation error and costing less CPU time for most problems. These conclusions agree with that of finite difference Lax-Wendroff WENO scheme for shallow water equations, while finite volume method has more flexible mesh structure compared to finite difference method

A well-balanced unsplit finite volume model with geometric flexibility

A two-dimensional finite volume model is developed for the unsteady, and shallow water equations on arbitrary topography. The equations are discretized on quadrilateral control volumes in an unstructured arrangement. The HLLC Riemann approximate solver is used to compute the interface fluxes and the MUSCL-Hancock scheme with the surface gradient method is employed for second-order accuracy. This study presents a new method for translation of discretization technique from a structured grid description based on the traditional (i, j) duplet to an unstructured grid arrangement based on a single index, and efficiency of proposed technique for unsplit finite volume method. In addition, a simple but robust well-balanced technique between fluxes and source terms is suggested. The model is validated by comparing the predictions with analytical solutions, experimental data and field data including the following cases: steady transcritical flow over a bump, dam-break flow in an adverse slope channel and the Malpasset dam-break in France

A Comparison of Two Shallow Water Models with Non-Conforming Adaptive Grids: classical tests

In an effort to study the applicability of adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) techniques to atmospheric models an interpolation-based spectral element shallow water model on a cubed-sphere grid is compared to a block-structured finite volume method in latitude-longitude geometry. Both models utilize a non-conforming adaptation approach which doubles the resolution at fine-coarse mesh interfaces. The underlying AMR libraries are quad-tree based and ensure that neighboring regions can only differ by one refinement level. The models are compared via selected test cases from a standard test suite for the shallow water equations. They include the advection of a cosine bell, a steady-state geostrophic flow, a flow over an idealized mountain and a Rossby-Haurwitz wave. Both static and dynamics adaptations are evaluated which reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the AMR techniques. Overall, the AMR simulations show that both models successfully place static and dynamic adaptations in local regions without requiring a fine grid in the global domain. The adaptive grids reliably track features of interests without visible distortions or noise at mesh interfaces. Simple threshold adaptation criteria for the geopotential height and the relative vorticity are assessed.Comment: 25 pages, 11 figures, preprin

Tsunami risk modelling for Australia: understanding the impact of data

Modelling the impacts from tsunami events is a complex task. A simplification is obtained by taking a hybrid approach where two different models are combined: relatively simple and fast models are used for simulating the tsunami event and the wave propagation through open water. The impact from tsunami inundation is simulated with another type of model which is suitable for resolving the details of the run-up process and the resulting inundation. The inundation modelling is conducted using the ANUGA model which is a result of collaboration between the Australian National University and Geoscience Australia. It solves the 2D nonlinear shallow water wave equations using a finite volume method. One of the critical requirements for reliable inundation modelling is an accurate model of the earth's surface that extends from the open ocean through the inter-tidal zone into the onshore areas to be studied. Production of a sufficiently accurate elevation model is a complex and difficult process made more difficult because the available elevation data inevitably will come from a number of different sources and will have a range of vintages, resolutions and reliability. There are two questions that arise when data is requested. The first deals with the true variability of the topography. Obviously, a flat surface needn’t be sampled nearly as finely as a highly convoluted surface. The second question relates to sensitivity; how are error bars derived for the impact results if the error bars on each elevation point is known? ANUGA solves the 2D nonlinear shallow water wave equations using a finite volume method and typical models can take days of computational time, so proper sensitivity analyses are often prohibitively expensive in terms of computational resources. The main aim of this project was therefore to understand the uncertainties in the outputs of the inundation model based on possible uncertainty in the input data

A physically-based approach for evaluating the hydraulic invariance in urban transformations

Transformation of urban areas satisfies hydraulic invariance (HI) if the maximum flow rate outgoing the area stays unchanged. The HI can be respected by dimensioning appropriate water storage volumes or low impact developments (LID) to balance the soil sealing and ground levelling effects. In order to comply with HI, some Italian regional legislation and river basin authority provide for the creation of storage tanks whose volume must be estimated through simple conceptual rainfallrunoff models. In this work a physically based approach for evaluating HI is proposed. It is based on interpolating the results from a large number of hydraulic simulations conducted using FullSWOF, which is an open source code developed by the University of Orléans. In this software the shallow water equations are solved using a finite volume scheme and friction laws and infiltration models are included. Simulations have been carried out considering the effect of three properties of the area, that is: the saturated hydraulic conductivity of soil, the slope of ground surface and the standard deviation of ground elevation around the mean level. Using the results, interpolating laws for the peak discharge and the critical rainfall duration as function of the three basin parameters have been derived. A parametric hydrograph as a function of the basin parameters and rainfall duration is defined and a HI evaluation method based on routing the parametric hydrograph is proposed. The results from this approach have been compared with those from non-physically based methods currently used, such as the direct rainfall approach and the linear reservoir approach. The comparison shows that the difference between these conceptual methods with that one proposed here is strongly dependent on the runoff coefficient value. It is also not possible to predict whether they are conservative or not

Finite volume schemes for dispersive wave propagation and runup

Finite volume schemes are commonly used to construct approximate solutions to conservation laws. In this study we extend the framework of the finite volume methods to dispersive water wave models, in particular to Boussinesq type systems. We focus mainly on the application of the method to bidirectional nonlinear, dispersive wave propagation in one space dimension. Special emphasis is given to important nonlinear phenomena such as solitary waves interactions, dispersive shock wave formation and the runup of breaking and non-breaking long waves.Comment: 41 pafes, 20 figures. Other author's papers can be downloaded at http://www.lama.univ-savoie.fr/~dutykh

Modified method of characteristics for the shallow water equations

Flow in open channels is frequently modelled using the shallow water equations (SWEs) with an up-winded scheme often used for the nonlinear terms in the numerical scheme (Delis et al., 2000; Erduran et al., 2002). This paper presents a mathematical model based on the SWEs to compute one dimensional (1-D) open channel flow. Two techniques have been used for the simulation of the flood wave along streams which are initially dry. The first one uses up-winding applied to the convective acceleration term in the SWEs to overcome the problem of numerical instabilities. This is applied to the integration of the shallow water equations within the domain, so the scheme does not require any special treatment, such as artificial viscosity or front tracking technique, to capture steep gradients in the solution. As in all initial value problems, the main difficulty is the boundaries, the conventional method of characteristics (MOC) can be applied in a straight forward way for a lot of cases, but when dealing with a very shallow initial depths followed by a flood wave, it is not possible to overcome the problem of reflections. So a modified method of characteristics (MMOC) is the second technique that has been developed by the authors to obtain a fully transparent downstream boundary and is the main subject of this paper. The mathematical model which integrates the SWEs using a staggered finite difference scheme within the domain and the MMOC near the boundary has been tested not only by comparing its results with some analytical solutions for both steady and unsteady flow but also by comparing the results obtained with the results of other models such as Abiola et al. (1988)

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 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.Comment: 36 page