The effect of floating objects has so far been little considered for hazard risk assessment and structure design, despite being an important factor causing structural damage in flood-prone and coastal areas. In this work, a novel two-way method is proposed to fully couple a shock-capturing hydrodynamic model with a discrete element model (DEM) for simulation of complex debris-enriched flow hydrodynamics. After being validated against an idealized analytical test, the new coupled model is used to reproduce flume experiments of floating debris driven by dam-break waves. The numerical results agree satisfactorily with the experimental measurements, demonstrating the model’s capability and efficiency in simulating complex fluid-debris interactions induced by violent shallow flows
