Modeling dam-break flood over natural rivers using Discontinuous Galerkin method

A well-balanced numerical model is presented for two-dimensional, depth-averaged, shallow water flows based on the Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method. The model is applied to simulate dam-break flood in natural rivers with wet/dry bed and complex topography. To eliminate numerical imbalance, the pressure force and bed slope terms are combined in the shallow water flow equations. For partially wet/dry elements, a treatment of the source term that preserves the well-balanced property is presented. A treatment for modeling flow over initially dry bed is presented. Numerical results show that the time step used is related to the dry bed criterion. The intercell numerical flux in the DG method is computed by the Harten-Lax-van Contact (HLLC) approximate Riemann solver. A two-dimensional slope limiting procedure is employed to prevent spurious oscillation. The robustness and accuracy of the model are demonstrated through several test cases, including dam-break flow in a channel with three bumps, laboratory dam-break tests over a triangular bump and an L-shape bend, dam-break flood in the Paute River, and the Malpasset dam-break case. Numerical results show that the model is robust and accurate to simulate dam-break flood over natural rivers with complex geometry and wet/dry beds.