Review of Computational River Dynamics by Weiming WuComputational River DynamicsTaylor and Francis9780415449618$189.95

Abstract

The first time I discussed this book with my Ph.D. students, the immediate question was how many additional copies we should buy. The book contains the most extensive coverage of formulas for numerical modeling of sediment transport that I have seen. It is well written with readable English and informative figures. The topics cover most areas of numerical modeling of rivers, from the equations describing the water flow to discretization in 1, 2, and 3 dimensions. Of the twelve chapters, one discusses mathematical description of water and sediment flow, giving the basic formulas used. Another chapter covers fundamentals of numerical methods, with discretization principles and schemes, the finite difference and volume methods, coordinate transformation, pressurealgorithms and solvers. Then three chapters cover 1D, 2D, and 3D modeling, respectively, with special formulas used in each of the three approaches. In addition to the numerical methods, some necessary physics are described in separate chapters on classical sediment transport, cohesive sediments, vegetation effects and contaminant transport. These chapters cover special formulas for the physical processes and their inclusion into the numerical model. Experience has shown that the accuracy of the numerical models is often limited by the correct empirical formulas for the physical processes, so the inclusion of these chapters is therefore necessary. Sediment transport modeling has been given a particularly detailed coverage in the book. A separate chapter has also been given for dambreak modeling, covering special formulas and numerical algorithms for rapidly varying flows. Dr. Wu has also included a few examples in the book, where results of the numerical models are given. Computational river dynamics covers both numerical modeling and river physics. A complete coverage of the field including derivations of all formulas would produce a book with several thousand pages. The current book has only 494 pages, so Dr. Wu has had to make choices in what to present. He has included a fairly large number of formulas, in total 1,253, while most derivations have been omitted. Priority has been given to formulas and algorithms especially used in river engineering. The number of formulas and their complexity is still extensive and can easily scare novices. Beginners in this field should be advised that it is not necessary to be familiar with all the formulas in the book to be able to use numerical models in river engineering. Although the book covers a wide range of subjects, it does not contain the state of the art in all fields. This would not be possible in the huge scientific area of computational fluid dynamics CFD . The 3D CFD modeling chapters omits recent work on multigrid solvers, non-isotropic turbulence modeling, wetting/ drying algorithms, and complex nonorthogonal unstructured grid generation. A large part of the book is devoted to algorithms for 1D and 2D depth-averaged flow. Algorithms for 3D modeling