E-proceedings of the 36th IAHR World Congress

28 June 3 July, 2015, The Hague, the

Netherlands

HIGH RESOLUTION RECONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES FOR SEDIMENT TRANSPORT IN SHALLOW

WATER FLOWS
KHAWAR REHMAN
(1)

(2)

(1)

& YONG-SIK CHO

(2)

Hanyang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea,

khawarrehman@hanyang.ac.kr

Corresponding Author, Hanyang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea,

ysc59@hanyang.ac.kr

ABSTRACT
In this study, a numerical approximation is proposed for bed load sediment transport for rapidly varying flows.
Hydrodynamics and morphodynamics of the flow are modeled by the two-dimensional Saint Venant and sediment
continuity equations, respectively. The equations are coupled and the solution is evolved in one time step by the
Godunov type finite volume method. For temporal discretization a third-order TVD Runge-Kutta method is used. For a
spatial accuracy, a gradient reconstruction is performed by two high resolution methods; A third order Weighted
Essentially Non oscillatory (WENO) scheme, and another gradient reconstruction together with a limiting technique.
Both techniques are employed on unstructured triangular meshes, which are advantageous over structured meshes
when local grid refinement is desired in vicinity of abrupt geometry modulations. These methods reconstruct cell
centered variables at interface of control volume for accurate approximation of flow information. Fluxes at the interfaces
are computed by approximate Riemann solvers. The applicability of the proposed model for a hyperbolic system is
studied by simulating several test cases and effects of both the reconstruction methods on the results are investigated.
Keywords: WENO scheme, Sediment transport, Shallow-water equations, Exner equation, Approximate Riemann Solvers.
1.

INTRODUCTION

In this study we used a coupled model to simulate a bed load sediment-transport initiated by the water flow, dominant in
alluvial rivers and estuaries. The mobility of beds in rivers, estuaries and channels can be satisfactorily represented by
sediment conservation or continuity.

qsy
q
z
(1 p)1 sx (1 p) 1
0
(1)
t
x
y
where z is erodible bed thickness, p is porosity of bed material, and qsx , qsy are sediment discharges along x- and yaxis respectively. We adopted Grasss model (Grass, 1981) in this study to define a solid transport discharge in
sediment continuity.

qsx u (u 2 v 2 ), qsy

v (u

v2 )

(2)

The evolution of bed is approximated by set of coupled shallow water and Exner equations. To solve coupled equations
numerically on a triangular grid system in a single step, we employed a cell-centered Godunov-type finite volume
method. The cell centered average state variables are extrapolated to the center of the interface by multidimensional
gradient reconstruction method proposed in (Jawahar & Kamath, 2000) and by WENO scheme (rnjari-ic, Vukovi, &
Sopta, 2004; Noelle, Xing, & Shu, 2007), to get second-order spatial accuracy. Harten-Lax-van Leer-Contact (HLLC)
approximate Riemann solver (Toro) is used for computation of hydrodynamic and morphological fluxes at cell interfaces.
Numerical test simulated by two reconstruction methods mentioned above are observed for their accuracy with exact
solutions.
2.

GOVERNING EQUATIONS

For a control volume, the shallow-water and Exner equation for incompressible flows are given in integral form as.
Q
dA F . ndl S dA
(3)
t
A
A
where A is the area of the control volume in two-dimensional case; Q(x,y,t) is the vector of conserved variables; F(x,y,t)
represents fluxes; is the interface length; n = is the unit outward normal at each boundary of control volume, and
S(x,y,t) is the vector of source terms which include bed topography and friction terms.

E-proceedings of the 36th IAHR World Congress,

28 June 3 July, 2015, The Hague, the Netherlands

d
qy
qx

2
q

q
u
0.5
gd
gd ( z )

q
v
x
x
x

x
x
,S
Q , Fx
(4)
, Fy
2
gd ( z y y )
u
0.5
q
q
v

gd
q
y
y
y

z
(1 p ) 1 v (u 2 v 2 )
(1 p ) 1 u (u 2 v 2 )

where d is water depth; q x and qy are discharges in x- and y- directions respectively; z is the erodible bed thickness;

F x and Fy are convective fluxes in x- and y- directions respectively; u and v are the velocity components in the x- and
y- directions respectively, g is the gravitational acceleration; represents the intensity of interaction between flow and
sediment from weaker to strong as its value increases from 0 to 1, and p is the porosity of bed material.
The friction slopes are estimated by using the Manning formula. For Godunov-type finite volume method Eq. (3)
becomes
Q n 1 Q n
1 m
F (Q L , Q R )n .nl S (Q n )
A 1
t

(5)

The procedure for application of WENO scheme is explained in (Hu & Shu, 1999; Zhu & Qiu, 2009, 2014). and Eq. (3)
can be written as
Q n 1 Q n t

3.

1 m
( l
A 1

F (Q(G , t )).n
j 1

S (Q n )), m 3

(6)

NUMERICAL TESTS

3.1 Steady flow over a hump

Proposed model is tested for transcritical flow over hump on fixed bed. The results in fig. 1 show excellent agreement
with analytical solution satisfying the well-balancing and accuracy requirements.

Bed
Analytical
Reconstruction (Jawahar & Kammath, 2000)
WENO scheme

0.50

0.45

Water Surface Elevation (m)

0.40

0.35

0.30

0.25

0.20

0.15

0.10

0.05

0.00

10

15

20

25

Distance (m)

Figure 1.transcitical flow with shock on fixed bed over hump

3.2 Dam-break over an erodible sand bed

The experimental studies were performed at Civil Engineering Department of UCL, Belgium (Spinewine & Zech, 2007).
We simulated our model for one case. The values of calibration constant ( ), sediment porosity (p), and Mannings
coefficient (n) are selected equal to 0.001, 0.47, and 0.0165, respectively, in both cases. The domain was discretized
into 1200 cells, and time step of 0.001 was used to advance the solution. The results are plotted after 0.25 s of dambreak in fig. 2. The comparison with [10] shows closer agreement between WENO scheme output and experimental
results. At 0.25 s, both the reconstruction methods are matching the experimental studies well; the bed erosion is
predicted more precisely by WENO scheme. Performance of both the schemes in capturing the position of wave front is
equally satisfactory.

E-proceedings of the 36th IAHR World Congress

28 June 3 July, 2015, The Hague, the Netherlands

Reconstruction (Jawahar & Kamath, 2000)

WENO scheme
Spinewine & Zech (2007)

0.40

0.35

Water Surface Elevation (m)

0.30

0.25

0.20

0.15

0.10

0.05

0.00

-0.05

Length (m)

Figure 2.Dam-break; t= 0.25 sec

4.

CONCLUSIONS

The objective of the study was to devise an efficient reconstruction method for rapidly varying flows on domains with an
erodible bed. The accuracy of the model using two methods is tested for a number of cases. It is deduced that while both
methods offer satisfactory results for dam-break flows and bed erosion, the WENO scheme approximations are closer to
experimental results which indicates that WENO scheme is more efficient in handling shocks related to bed erosion and
sediment transport. The differences that are observed in comparison with experimental studies for the two methods are
attributed to a number of sediment characteristics that are considered in more complex sediment transport formulas.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by a grant from Study on Solitary Wave Run-up for Hazard Mitigation of Coastal
Communities against Sea Level Rise funded by the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, Korea.
REFERENCES
rnjari-ic, N., Vukovi, S., and Sopta, L. (2004). Balanced finite volume WENO and central WENO schemes for the
shallow water and the open-channel flow equations. Journal of Computational Physics, 200(2), 512-548. doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2004.04.012
Grass, A. (1981). Sediment transport by waves and currents, SERC London Cent. Mar. Technol, Report No. FL29.
Hu, C., and Shu, C.-W. (1999). Weighted essentially non-oscillatory schemes on triangular meshes. Journal of
Computational Physics, 150(1), 97-127.
Jawahar, P., and Kamath, H. (2000). A High-Resolution Procedure for Euler and NavierStokes Computations on
Unstructured Grids. Journal of Computational Physics, 164(1), 165-203. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jcph.2000.6596
Noelle, S., Xing, Y., and Shu, C.-W. (2007). High-order well-balanced finite volume WENO schemes for shallow water
equation
with
moving
water.
Journal
of
Computational
Physics,
226(1),
29-58.
doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2007.03.031
Spinewine, B., and Zech, Y. (2007). Small-scale laboratory dam-break waves on movable beds. Journal of Hydraulic
Research, 45(sup1), 73-86.
Toro, E. Shock-capturing methods for free-surface shallow flows. 2001. Chichester, etc.: Wiley.
Zhu, J., and Qiu, J. (2009). Hermite WENO schemes and their application as limiters for Runge-Kutta discontinuous
Galerkin method, III: unstructured meshes. Journal of Scientific Computing, 39(2), 293-321.
Zhu, J., and Qiu, J. (2014). Finite volume Hermite WENO schemes for solving the HamiltonJacobi equations II:
Unstructured
meshes.
Computers
&
Mathematics
with
Applications,
68(10),
1137-1150.
doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.camwa.2014.08.013