Flood wave propagation in steep mountain rivers

Abstract

Most of the recent developments concerning efficient numerical schemes to solve the shallow-water equations in view of real world flood modelling purposes concern the two-dimensional form of the equations or the one-dimensional form written for rectangular, unit-width channels. Extension of these efficient schemes to the one-dimensional cross-sectional averaged shallow-water equations is not straightforward, especially when complex natural topographies are considered. This paper presents different formulations of numerical schemes based on the HLL (Harten-Lax-van Leer) solver, and the adaptation of the topographical source term treatment when cross-sections of arbitrary shape are considered. Coupled and uncoupled formulations of the equations are considered, in combination with centred and lateralised source term treatment. These schemes are compared to a numerical solver of Lax Friedrichs type based on a staggered grid. The proposed schemes are first tested against two theoretical benchmark tests and then applied to the Brembo River, an Italian alpine river, firstly simulating a steady-state condition and secondly reproducing the 2002 flood wave propagation. © IWA Publishing 2013.