Well-balanced Finite Volume Method Research Articles

Modelling reservoir sediment flushing through a bottom tunnel with an initially covered intake

Sediment flushing through a bottom tunnel is one of the most effective methods to alleviate reservoir sedimentation. However, the multi-physical hydro-sediment-morphological processes of reservoir sediment flushing through an initially covered bottom tunnel intake have remained poorly understood, and a physically enhanced and practically viable mathematical model is required. The present study uses an integrated model to resolve sediment flushing through an initially covered bottom tunnel intake. The proposed model couples a two-dimensional double layer-averaged model for the reservoir with a one-dimensional model for the bottom tunnel by means of numerical fluxes calculations at the inner boundary. The governing equations are solved synchronously using a well-balanced finite volume method. Several parameters related to boundary resistances and sediment exchange flux need to be determined for model closure. The model is tested against data from a series of physical experiments on reservoir sediment flushing, with sound agreement achieved between computed and measured scour hole geometries. Moreover, the present model successfully predicts the occurrence of tunnel blockage. The results prove that reservoir sediment flushing is best accomplished for high reservoir water level, small cover layer thickness, short tunnel length and steep tunnel slope. The present model facilitates reservoir design and operation to help preserve reservoir capacity.

On high order positivity-preserving well-balanced finite volume methods for the Euler equations with gravitation

This paper studies three high-order structure-preserving finite volume weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) methods, which are not only well balanced (WB) for a general known hydrostatic equilibrium state but also preserve the positivity of density and pressure, for the compressible Euler equations under gravitational fields. These methods are built on a simple local scaling positivity-preserving (PP) limiter and a modified WENO-ZQ reconstruction exactly preserving the cell average value and scaling invariance. The WB properties of these three methods are achieved based on suitable numerical fluxes and approximation to the gravitational source terms. Based on some convex decomposition techniques as well as several critical properties of the admissible states and numerical flux, we carry out rigorous positivity-preserving analyses for these three WB schemes. We rigorously prove that the three WB methods, coupled with the PP limiter and a strong-stability-preserving time discretization, are always PP under suitable Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy conditions. Extensive numerical examples are provided to confirm WB and PP properties of three methods.

Modelling urban flooding integrated with flow and sediment transport in drainage networks

Drainage networks play an essential role in mitigating urban flooding, which, nevertheless, are prone to suffer sediment deposits. To date, however, the effects of sediments in drainage networks on urban flooding remain poorly understood. Here an integrated model is proposed for urban flooding. It is composed of a hydrological module for surface runoff integrated with a one-dimensional hydro-sediment-morphodynamic module for coupled open-channel or pressurized flow and sediment transport in drainage networks. The governing equations are solved synchronously using a well-balanced finite volume method. The model is tested against two laboratory cases involving mixed flow and sediment transport in pipes, and the results agree well with observed data. A new residential area with virtually pervious surface and an established urban area with essentially impervious surfaces are studied using the present model to unravel how sediments in drainage networks affect urban flooding under different extreme rainfall and sediment scenarios. The results reveal that sediments alter the discharge hydrographs in the drainage networks to distinct extents under different storm return periods. As far as the present computational cases are concerned, when a third of the pipe diameter is occupied by sediment deposits, the peak pipeline flow discharge decreases by up to 25 %. Accordingly, the surface inundation depth increases by up to 18 %, and the inundation area expands by up to 12 %, characterizing a considerably higher flooding risk. The present findings provide insight into the influences of sediment transport in drainage networks on urban flooding.

Parallel Algorithms of Well-Balanced and Weighted Average Flux for Shallow Water Model Using CUDA

Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) implementations are presented of a well-balanced finite volume method for solving a shallow water model. The CUDA platform allows programs to run parallel on GPU. Four versions of the CUDA algorithm are presented in addition to a CPU implementation. Each version is improved from the previous one. We present the following techniques for optimizing a CUDA program: limiting register usage, changing the global memory access pattern, and using loop unroll. The accuracy of all programs is investigated in 3 test cases: a circular dam break on a dry bed, a circular dam break on a wet bed, and a dam break flow over three humps. The last parallel version shows 3.84x speedup over the first CUDA implementation. We use our program to simulate a real-world problem based on an assumed partial breakage of the Srinakarin Dam located in Kanchanaburi province, Thailand. The simulation shows that the strong interaction between massive water flows and bottom elevations under wet and dry conditions is well captured by the well-balanced scheme, while the optimized parallel program produces a 57.32x speedup over the serial version.

Equilibrium approach for modeling erosional failure of granular dams

Erosional failure of granular dams by an overtopping body of water is investigated using a depth-averaged morphodynamic model. The transport of sediment by the flow assumes the sediment flux to remain in equilibrium with the local bed shear stress. Accordingly, the shallow-water hydrodynamic equations are coupled with the Exner equation for mass conservation of the sediment. The system of equations is solved using a fully coupled well-balanced finite volume method, second-order accurate in time and space. The effect of the steep bed slope of a dam face is incorporated into both the hydrodynamics and sediment transport equations, leading to improved predictions. Comparison with results obtained from nonequilibrium sediment transport models indicates that such models perform poorly while predicting the bed evolution near the toe of an eroding dam. Observations from experimental studies demonstrate that the amount of sediment entrained by the flow is not significant, except during the initial moments of failure. This suggests that the vertical exchange of mass between the bed and the flow layer, as assumed by the nonequilibrium models, may not be completely valid during the failure. The equilibrium model results, reproducing the key flow features of the overtopping failure process, are validated by experimental measurements. The study provides fresh insights into the sediment transport processes associated with the erosion of a granular dam by overtopping, establishes the appropriateness of the equilibrium approach for its numerical modeling, and proposes a well-balanced second-order accurate solution technique for solving the resulting coupled equations of flow and sediment transport.

High order well-balanced finite volume methods for multi-dimensional systems of hyperbolic balance laws

We introduce a general framework for the construction of well-balanced finite volume methods for hyperbolic balance laws. We use the phrase well-balancing in a broader sense, since our proposed method can be applied to exactly follow any solution of any system of hyperbolic balance laws in multiple spatial dimensions and not only time independent solutions. The solution has to be known a priori, either as an analytical expression or as discrete data. The proposed framework modifies the standard finite volume approach such that the well-balancing property is obtained and in case the method is high order accurate, this is maintained under our modification. We present numerical tests for the compressible Euler equations with and without gravity source term and with different equations of state, and for the equations of compressible ideal magnetohydrodynamics.

A hybrid finite volume/finite element method for shallow water waves by static deformation on seabeds

Purpose The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to derive a consistent model free-surface runup flow problems over deformable beds. The authors couple the nonlinear one-dimensional shallow water equations, including friction terms for the water free-surface and the two-dimensional second-order solid elastostatic equations for the bed deformation. Second, to develop a robust hybrid finite element/finite volume method for solving free-surface runup flow problems over deformable beds. The authors combine the finite volume for free-surface flows and the finite element method for bed elasticity. Design/methodology/approach The authors propose a new model for wave runup by static deformation on seabeds. The model consists of the depth-averaged shallow water system for the water free-surface coupled to the second-order elastostatic formulation for the bed deformation. At the interface between the water flow and the seabed, transfer conditions are implemented. Here, hydrostatic pressure and friction forces are considered for the elastostatic equations, whereas bathymetric forces are accounted for in the shallow water equations. As numerical solvers, the authors propose a well-balanced finite volume method for the flow system and a stabilized finite element method for elastostatics. Findings The developed coupled depth-averaged shallow water system and second-order solid elastostatic system is well suited for modeling wave runup by deformation on seabeds. The derived coupling conditions at the interface between the water flow and the bed topography resolve well the condition transfer between the two systems. The proposed hybrid finite volume element method is accurate and efficient for this class of models. The novel technique used for wet/dry treatment accurately captures the moving fronts in the computational domain without generating nonphysical oscillations. The presented numerical results demonstrate the high performance of the proposed methods. Originality/value Enhancing modeling and computations for wave runup problems is at an early stage in the literature, and it is a new and exciting area of research. To the best of our knowledge, solving wave runup problems by static deformation on seabeds using a hybrid finite volume element method is presented for the first time. The results of this research study, and the research methodologies, will have an important influence on a range of other scientists carrying out research in related fields.

A full-field simulation methodology for sonic boom modeling on adaptive Cartesian cut-cell meshes

This paper develops a full-field direct numerical simulation methodology of sonic boom in a stratified atmosphere. The entire flow field, ranging from the near field around a supersonic body to the far field extending to the ground, is modeled by the three-dimensional Euler equations with a gravitational source term. Thus far, it has been solved using a structured grid, and an application of previous simulation to complex geometries has been limited. In this study, we realize a full-field simulation by employing the following four numerical approaches: (i) a hierarchical structured adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) method, (ii) a Cartesian cut cell method, (iii) a well-balanced finite volume method, and (iv) a segmentation method of the computational domain. A new well-balanced, MUSCL-Hancock scheme applied over Cartesian AMR and cut cell grids for a stratified atmosphere is formulated. The computational results of an oblique shock wave in a stratified atmosphere agree well with the exact solution. A full-field simulation successfully reproduces the Drop test for Simplified Evaluation of Non-symmetrically Distributed sonic boom (D-SEND) #1, conducted by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The results of this simulation are in good agreement with those of the previous computational study, the waveform parameter method, and flight test measurements. The grid convergence study shows that the mesh size is fine enough to assess pressure signatures over the entire flow field. These results demonstrate that a full-field simulation with AMR and cut cell grids is a powerful tool for extensively analyzing three-dimensional shock wave propagation in a stratified atmosphere.

A two-layer shallow flow model with two axes of integration, well-balanced discretization and application to submarine avalanches

We propose a two-layer model with two different axes of integration and a well-balanced finite volume method. The purpose is to study submarine avalanches and generated tsunamis by a depth-averaged model with different averaged directions for the fluid and the granular layers. Two-layer shallow depth-averaged models usually consider either Cartesian or local coordinates for both layers. However, the motion characteristics of the granular layer and the water wave are different: the granular flow velocity is mainly oriented downslope while water motion related to tsunami wave propagation is mostly horizontal. As a result, the shallow approximation and depth-averaging have to be imposed (i) in the direction normal to the topography for the granular flow and (ii) in the vertical direction for the water layer. To deal with this problem, we define a reference plane related to topography variations and use the associated local coordinates to derive the granular layer equations whereas Cartesian coordinates are used for the fluid layer. Depth-averaging is done orthogonally to that reference plane for the granular layer equations and in the vertical direction for the fluid layer equations. Then, a finite volume method is defined based on an extension of the hydrostatic reconstruction. The proposed method is exactly well-balanced for two kinds of stationary solutions: the classical one, when both water and granular masses are at rest; the second one, when only the granular mass is at rest. Several tests are presented to get insight into the sensitivity of the granular flow, deposit and generated water waves to the choice of the coordinate systems. Our results show that even for moderate slopes (up to 30°), strong relative errors on the avalanche dynamics and deposit (up to 60%) and on the generated water waves (up to 120%) are made when using Cartesian coordinates for both layers instead of an appropriate local coordinate system as proposed here.

Flood Simulation by a Well-Balanced Finite Volume Method in Tapi River Basin, Thailand, 2017

Flood simulation of a region in southern Thailand during January 2017 is presented in this work. The study area covers the Tapi river, the longest river in southern Thailand. The simulation is performed by applying the two-dimensional shallow water model in the presence of strong source terms to the local bottom topography. The model is solved numerically by our finite volume method with well-balanced property and linear reconstruction technique. This technique is accurate and efficient at solving for complex flows in the wet/dry interface problem. Measurements of flows are collected from two gauging stations in the area. The initial conditions are prepared to match the simulated flow to the measurements recorded at the gauging stations. The accuracy of the numerical simulations is demonstrated by comparing the simulated flood area to satellite images from the same period. The results are in good agreement, indicating the suitability of the shallow water model and the presented numerical method for simulating floodplain inundation.

A new numerical treatment of moving wet/dry fronts in dam-break flows

The aim of this paper is to present a new finite volume method for moving wet/dry fronts in shallow water flows. The method consists on reformulating the shallow water equations in a moving wetted domain where the wet/dry interface is located using the speed of the water flow. A set of parametrized coordinates is introduced and the underlying equations are transformed to a new hyperbolic system with advection terms to be solved in fixed domains. A well-balanced finite volume method is developed to approximate numerical solutions of the parametrized system. We derive a well-balanced approximation of the source terms and prove that the proposed method is well-balanced for the shallow water flows in the presence of moving wet/dry fronts over non-flat topography. Several numerical results confirm the reliability and accuracy of the new method.

Non-linear hydrodynamic instability and turbulence in eccentric astrophysical discs with vertical structure

Non-linear evolution of the parametric instability of inertial waves inherent to eccentric discs is studied by way of a new local numerical model. Mode coupling of tidal deformation with the disc eccentricity is known to produce exponentially growing eccentricities at certain mean-motion resonances. However, the details of an efficient saturation mechanism balancing this growth still are not fully understood. This paper develops a local numerical model for an eccentric quasi-axisymmetric shearing box which generalises the often-used cartesian shearing box model. The numerical method is an overall second order well-balanced finite volume method which maintains the stratified and oscillatory steady-state solution by construction. This implementation is employed to study the non-linear outcome of the parametric instability in eccentric discs with vertical structure. Stratification is found to constrain the perturbation energy near the mid-plane and localise the effective region of inertial wave breaking that sources turbulence. A saturated marginally sonic turbulent state results from the non-linear breaking of inertial waves and is subsequently unstable to large-scale axisymmetric zonal flow structures. This resulting limit-cycle behaviour reduces access to the eccentric energy source and prevents substantial transport of angular momentum radially through the disc. Still, the saturation of this parametric instability of inertial waves is shown to damp eccentricity on a time-scale of a thousand orbital periods. It may thus be a promising mechanism for intermittently regaining balance with the exponential growth of eccentricity from the eccentric Lindblad resonances and may also help explain the occurrence of "bursty" dynamics such as the superhump phenomenon.

Shallow-water simulations by a well-balanced WAF finite volume method: a case study to the great flood in 2011, Thailand

A well-balanced finite volume method for solving two-dimensional shallow water equations with weighted average flux (WAF) is developed in this work to simulate flooding. Friction source terms are estimated with a semi-implicit scheme resulting in an efficient numerical method for simulating shallow water flows over irregular domains, for both wet and dry beds. A wet/dry cell tracking technique is also presented for reducing computational time. The accuracy of these methods are investigated by application to well-studied cases. For practical purposes, the developed scheme is applied to simulate the flooding of the Chao Phraya river from Chai Nat to Sing Buri provinces in Thailand during October 13–17, 2011. The numerical simulations yield results that agree with the existing data obtained from the satellite images.

Critical control in transcritical shallow-water flow over two obstacles

The nonlinear shallow-water equations are often used to model flow over topography. In this paper we use these equations both analytically and numerically to study flow over two widely separated localised obstacles, and compare the outcome with the corresponding flow over a single localised obstacle. Initially we assume uniform flow with constant water depth, which is then perturbed by the obstacles. The upstream flow can be characterised as subcritical, supercritical and transcritical, respectively. We review the well-known theory for flow over a single localised obstacle, where in the transcritical regime the flow is characterised by a local hydraulic flow over the obstacle, contained between an elevation shock propagating upstream and a depression shock propagating downstream. Classical shock closure conditions are used to determine these shocks. Then we show that the same approach can be used to describe the flow over two widely spaced localised obstacles. The flow development can be characterised by two stages. The first stage is the generation of upstream elevation shock and downstream depression shock from each obstacle alone, isolated from the other obstacle. The second stage is the interaction of two shocks between the two obstacles, followed by an adjustment to a hydraulic flow over both obstacles, with criticality being controlled by the higher of the two obstacles, and by the second obstacle when they have equal heights. This hydraulic flow is terminated by an elevation shock propagating upstream of the first obstacle and a depression shock propagating downstream of the second obstacle. A weakly nonlinear model for sufficiently small obstacles is developed to describe this second stage. The theoretical results are compared with fully nonlinear simulations obtained using a well-balanced finite-volume method. The analytical results agree quite well with the nonlinear simulations for sufficiently small obstacles.

Coupling techniques for nonlinear hyperbolic equations. IV. Well-balanced schemes for scalar multi-dimensional and multi-component laws

This series of papers is devoted to the formulation and the approximation of coupling problems for nonlinear hyperbolic equations. The coupling across an interface in the physical space is formulated in term of an augmented system of partial differential equations. In an earlier work, this strategy allowed us to develop a regularization method based on a thick interface model in one space variable. In the present paper, we significantly extend this framework and, in addition, encompass equations in several space variables. This new formulation includes the coupling of several distinct conservation laws and allows for a possible covering in space. Our main contributions are, on one hand, the design and analysis of a well-balanced finite volume method on general triangulations and, on the other hand, a proof of convergence of this method toward entropy solutions, extending Coquel, Cockburn, and LeFloch's theory (restricted to a single conservation law without coupling). The core of our analysis is, first, the derivation of entropy inequalities as well as a discrete entropy dissipation estimate and, second, a proof of convergence toward the entropy solution of the coupling problem.

A STUDY OF WELL-BALANCED FINITE VOLUME METHODS AND REFINEMENT INDICATORS FOR THE SHALLOW WATER EQUATIONS

Water flows can be modelled mathematically and one available model is the shallow water equations. This thesis studies solutions to the shallow water equations analytically and numerically. The study is separated into three parts. The first part is about well-balanced finite volume methods to solve steady and unsteady state problems. A method is said to be well-balanced if it preserves an unperturbed steady state at the discrete level~\cite{NPPN2006}. We implement hydrostatic reconstructions proposed by Audusse et al.~\cite{ABBKP2004} for the well-balanced methods with respect to the steady state of a lake at rest. Four combinations of quantity reconstructions are tested. Our results indicate an appropriate combination of quantity reconstructions for dealing with steady and unsteady state problems~\cite{MR2010}. The second part presents some new analytical solutions to debris avalanche problems~\cite{MR2011DA,MR2012PAAG} and reviews the implicit Carrier--Greenspan periodic solution for flows on a sloping beach~\cite{MR2012CG}. The analytical solutions to debris avalanche problems are derived using characteristics and a variable transformation technique. The analytical solutions are used as benchmarks to test the performance of numerical solutions. For the Carrier--Greenspan periodic solution, we show that the linear approximation of the Carrier--Greenspan periodic solution may result in large errors in some cases. If an explicit approximation of the Carrier--Greenspan periodic solution is needed, higher order approximations should be considered. We propose second order approximations of the Carrier--Greenspan periodic solution and present a way to get higher order approximations. The third part discusses refinement indicators used in adaptive finite volume methods to detect smooth and nonsmooth regions. In the adaptive finite volume methods, smooth regions are coarsened to reduce the computational costs and nonsmooth regions are refined to get more accurate solutions. We consider the numerical entropy production~\cite{Puppo2004} and weak local residuals~\cite{KKP2002} as refinement indicators. Regarding the numerical entropy production, our work is the first to implement the numerical entropy production as a refinement indicator into adaptive finite volume methods used to solve the shallow water equations. Regarding weak local residuals, we propose formulations to compute weak local residuals on nonuniform meshes. Our numerical experiments show that both the numerical entropy production and weak local residuals are successful as refinement indicators. Some publications corresponding to this thesis are listed in the References~\cite{MR2010,MR2011DA,MR2012PAAG,MR2012CG,MR2011NEP,MR2013NEP,MR2011IEEE}. 10.1017/S0004972713000750

Stable Numerical Model for Transcritical Flow and Sediment Transport on Uneven Bathymetry

A stable and well-balanced finite volume method was proposed to solve the shallow water equations coupled with a sediment transport equation. An approximate Riemann solver with a monotone upstream-centered schemes for conservation laws (MUSCL) reconstruction was used for the computation of the flux terms. A special but relatively simple treatment of source terms made it possible to ensure numerically and physically balanced computational results on very steep sloped beds. Various numerical simulations conducted on rigid beds have demonstrated that the proposed numerical scheme could provide stable computational results in the cases of flat and nonflat bottoms. From the comparisons of experiments on erodible beds in one- and two-dimensional channels, good agreement was obtained when proper parameters for turbulent flow and sediment transport were provided. Lastly, the effects of the parameters in relation to hydraulic characteristics included in the flow and the sediment transport models were investigated ...

A parallel well-balanced finite volume method for shallow water equations with topography on the cubed-sphere

A finite volume scheme for the global shallow water model on the cubed-sphere mesh is proposed and studied in this paper. The new cell-centered scheme is based on Osher’s Riemann solver together with a high-order spatial reconstruction. On each patch interface of the cubed-sphere only one layer of ghost cells is needed in the scheme and the numerical flux is calculated symmetrically across the interface to ensure the numerical conservation of total mass. The discretization of the topographic term in the equation is properly modified in a well-balanced manner to suppress spurious oscillations when the bottom topography is non-smooth. Numerical results for several test cases including a steady-state nonlinear geostrophic flow and a zonal flow over an isolated mountain are provided to show the flexibility of the scheme. Some parallel implementation details as well as some performance results on a parallel supercomputer with more than one thousand processor cores are also provided.

Parallel multilevel methods for implicit solution of shallow water equations with nonsmooth topography on the cubed-sphere

High resolution and scalable parallel algorithms for the shallow water equations on the sphere are very important for modeling the global climate. In this paper, we introduce and study some highly scalable multilevel domain decomposition methods for the fully implicit solution of the nonlinear shallow water equations discretized with a second-order well-balanced finite volume method on the cubed-sphere. With the fully implicit approach, the time step size is no longer limited by the stability condition, and with the multilevel preconditioners, good scalabilities are obtained on computers with a large number of processors. The investigation focuses on the use of semismooth inexact Newton method for the case with nonsmooth topography and the use of two- and three-level overlapping Schwarz methods with different order of discretizations for the preconditioning of the Jacobian systems. We test the proposed algorithm for several benchmark cases and show numerically that this approach converges well with smooth and nonsmooth bottom topography, and scales perfectly in terms of the strong scalability and reasonably well in terms of the weak scalability on machines with thousands and tens of thousands of processors.

Well-balanced finite volume evolution Galerkin methods for the shallow water equations

We present a new well-balanced finite volume method within the framework of the finite volume evolution Galerkin (FVEG) schemes. The methodology will be illustrated for the shallow water equations with source terms modelling the bottom topography and Coriolis forces. Results can be generalized to more complex systems of balance laws. The FVEG methods couple a finite volume formulation with approximate evolution operators. The latter are constructed using the bicharacteristics of multidimensional hyperbolic systems, such that all of the infinitely many directions of wave propagation are taken into account explicitly. We derive a well-balanced approximation of the integral equations and prove that the FVEG scheme is well-balanced for the stationary steady states as well as for the steady jets in the rotational frame. Several numerical experiments for stationary and quasi-stationary states as well as for steady jets confirm the reliability of the well-balanced FVEG scheme.