Section: Application Domains

River Hydraulics

Participants : Eric Blayo, Mehdi-Pierre Daou, Antoine Rousseau, Manel Tayachi.

Shallow Water (SW) models are widely used for the numerical modeling of river flows. Depending on the geometry of the domain, of the flow regime, and of the level of accuracy which is required, either 1D or 2D SW models are implemented. It is thus necessary to couple 1D models with 2D models when both models are used to represent different portions of the same river. Moreover, when a river flows into the sea/ocean (e.g. the Rhône river in the Mediterranean), one may need to couple a 2D SW with a full 3D model (such as the Navier-Stokes equations) of the estuary. These issues have been widely addressed by the river-engineering community, but often with somehow crude approaches in terms of coupling algorithms. This may be improved thanks to more advanced boundary conditions, and with the use of Schwarz iterative methods for example. We tackled these issues, in the past in the framework of a partnership with the French electricity company EDF, and now thanks to another contract with ARTELIA Group.