A second order residual based predictor–corrector approach for time dependent pollutant transport

Abstract

We present a second order residual distribution scheme for scalar transport problems in shallow water flows. The scheme, suitable for the unsteady cases, is obtained adapting to the shallow water context the explicit Runge-Kutta schemes for scalar equations 1. The resulting scheme is decoupled from the hydrodynamics yet the continuity equation has to be considered in order to respect some important numerical properties at discrete level. Beyond the classical characteristics of the residual formulation presented in 1,2, we introduce the possibility to iterate the corrector step in order to improve the accuracy of the scheme. Another novelty is that the scheme is based on a precise monotonicity condition which guarantees the respect of the maximum principle. We thus end up with a scheme which is mass conservative, second order accurate and monotone. These properties are checked in the numerical tests, where the proposed approach is also compared to some finite volume schemes on unstructured grids. The results obtained show the interest in adopting the predictor-corrector scheme for pollutant transport applications, where conservation of the mass, monotonicity and accuracy are the most relevant concerns.