Numerical Modeling in Open Channel Hydraulics

Book excerpt: Open channel hydraulics has always been a very interesting domain of scienti c and engineering activity because of the great importance of water for human l- ing. The free surface ow, which takes place in the oceans, seas and rivers, can be still regarded as one of the most complex physical processes in the environment. The rst source of dif culties is the proper recognition of physical ow processes and their mathematical description. The second one is related to the solution of the derived equations. The equations arising in hydrodynamics are rather comp- cated and, except some much idealized cases, their solution requires application of the numerical methods. For this reason the great progress in open channel ow modeling that took place during last 40 years paralleled the progress in computer technique, informatics and numerical methods. It is well known that even ty- cal hydraulic engineering problems need applications of computer codes. Thus, we witness a rapid development of ready-made packages, which are widely d- seminated and offered for engineers. However, it seems necessary for their users to be familiar with some fundamentals of numerical methods and computational techniques applied for solving the problems of interest. This is helpful for many r- sons. The ready-made packages can be effectively and safely applied on condition that the users know their possibilities and limitations. For instance, such knowledge is indispensable to distinguish in the obtained solutions the effects coming from the considered physical processes and those caused by numerical artifacts.