Abstract
This paper applied a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) approach to solve Shallow Water Equations (SWEs) to study practical dam-break flows. The computational program is based on the open source code SWE-SPHysics, where a Monotone Upstream-centered Scheme for Conservation Laws (MUSCL) reconstruction method is used to improve the Riemann solution with Lax-Friedrichs flux. A virtual boundary particle method is applied to treat the solid boundary. The model is first tested on two benchmark collapses of water columns with the existence of downstream obstacle. Subsequently the model is applied to forecast a prototype dam-break flood, which might occur in South-Gate Gorges Reservoir area of Qinghai Province, China. It shows that the SWE-SPH modeling approach could provide a promising simulation tool for practical dam-break flows in engineering scale.
Highlights
The hydraulic dam plays an important role in the flood control and power generation, which brings great benefit to the national and domestic economy
The main purpose of this work is to evaluate the potentials of the shallow water equations (SWEs)-Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) modeling approach in an engineering context and the open source code SWE-SPHysics [9,10] is used as the modeling tool
SWE-SPHysics to two benchmark dam break flows interacting with a triangular hump and code SWE-SPHysics to two benchmark dam break flows interacting with a triangular hump and rectangular obstacle, the numerical accuracy is fully evidenced
Summary
The hydraulic dam plays an important role in the flood control and power generation, which brings great benefit to the national and domestic economy. Accurate and timely predictions of the dam break flow propagation have both theoretical and engineering importance to prevent the damage of property and loss of life [1]. The modeling of dam break flow in downstream areas is a benchmark shallow water problem and usually investigated by solving the shallow water equations (SWEs) using either analytical or numerical approaches. The Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) is a robust mesh-free numerical modeling technique originated from the astrophysics [3]. The first SPH application in free surface flow was documented as early as 1994 [4]. Since it has been increasingly explored to study various free surface flow problems, including the dam break flood [5,6]. Until now most documented SPH works have solved the Navier-Stokes (N-S) equations using either the weakly compressible SPH (WCSPH)
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