A coupled 1-D/2-D model for simulating river sediment transport and bed evolution

Abstract

The paper details the method to couple a 1-D hydro-sedimentary model to a 2-D hydro-sedimentary model in order to represent the hydrodynamics and morphological processes during a flood event along a river. Tested on two field cases, the coupled model is stable even in the case of generalized overflow over the riverbanks or of levee breaching. For lateral coupling, the coupled model allows saving computational time compared to a full 2-D model and to provide valuable results concerning the flooding features as well as the evolution of the bed topography. However, despite a similar simplified representation of the sediment features in the 1-D and 2-D models, some discrepancies appear in the case of upstream/downstream coupling along a cross section perpendicular to the flow direction because the assumption of homogeneous velocity and concentration is not valid for estimating sediment transport. Further research is necessary to be able to define a suitable distribution of the sediments on the 1-D side of the boundary between the two models.