2DH Numerical Experiment, 2009

SHALLOW WATER FLOW AROUND AN ISLAND

Peter Stansby, School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, University of Manchester

The aim is to provide a simple example of shallow water flow in a 2D depth-averaged form where
there is marked and interesting flow variation dependent on the various parameters. It is also
important for an undergraduate exercise that the simulation runs in relatively small times, 1-5 minutes
on a standard PC, because of limited time for the exercise. With this in mind the mesh size has to be
made as small as possible while still capturing the flow ‘reality’.

The flow around an island is ideal for this purpose. It has been investigated experimentally in the
laboratory so precisely what happens is known. We consider a circular island but many of the wake
features are similar in more coastal complex geometries/ bathymetries. The teaching code is set up
with vertical sides again for simplicity.

The horizontal layout is show below

P1 P2 P3
P1 − dye input
• • • 3.3m
P2 − velocity, dye con.
P3 output

5.5m

The slope is set up so that ‘normal’ flow conditions would occur without the island in position, i.e. the
flow does not change in time. The mesh size is fixed at 50x30 which gives a cell size which is small
enough to capture the relevant flow phenomena.

At the start time, t=0, the velocity is set equal everywhere. The time-stepping starts and the flow
around the island develops. An important aspect of the flow is asymmetric wake development which
can take a long time to develop naturally because the geometrical configuration is exactly symmetrical
about the flume centreline. The asymmetry would occur due to computer round-off error which is of
course very small. To speed this up an ‘artificial’ asymmetry is introduced at entry by forcing a ‘v’
velocity equal to 0.5.u.sin(2πt/T) for t < T/2 and T=20s (this is an arbitrary value which does not
affect the eventual flow pattern).

The executable code is called sw2d.exe, available on

http://personalpages.umist.ac.uk/staff/david.d.apsley/lectures/comphydr/index.htm.
Requests for values will appear on the screen with default values suggested. Start with these to get
going.

The characteristics of the flow around the island depend on the inlet velocity, the depth, the friction
coefficient and the diameter. These can all be varied in the program, an appropriate range of values is
given below:

CompHyd.9 1
 velocity…. 0.05 – 0.4m/s
depth…. 0.01 – 0.4m
friction coefficient…. 0.005 – 0.1
diameter…. 0.6m (keep fixed due to restriction by the width of the flume).

The code is strictly set up for subcritical flow, i.e. the Froude number should be less than 1. Since the
flow accelerates around the island inlet Froude number should be less than about 0.5.

The length of the run simulation depends on the time step size and the number of time steps. The time
step size should be as large as possible without causing numerical instability or smoothing away any
unsteady characteristics. If the program does crash re-run with a smaller time step size (to give the
same total time of run the number of time steps will have to be increased).

The laboratory experiments show that the stability parameter S = C f D / h defines the wake
characteristics to a large degree. The aim here is to investigate this with these numerical experiments.

The flow is most effectively visualised by velocity vector maps. These are output at the end of the run
in file ‘sw2dh.vec’. They can easily be plotted using the Gnuplot graph plotter by typing ‘plot
“sw2dh.vec” w vec’. To change velocity lengths by x2 for example type ‘plot “sw2dh.vec”
u 1:2:($3*2):($4*2) w vec’. To label axes type ‘set xlabel “time” ‘ for example. Graphs may be
copied to clipboard then pasted into a Word document. To find out more about Gnuplot type ‘help’.

An important practical aspect of this flow is its effect on solute dispersion. To investigate this a point
source of solute is input one diameter upstream of the island centre. The value of concentration is set
to a reference value of 1. The variations of concentration with time at positions one diameter and
three diameters downstream are output in files ‘sw2dh.c2’ and ‘sw2dh.c3’ respectively, corresponding
to points P2 and P3 in the figure. The ‘v’ velocity variations with time are also output at these points
in files ‘sw2dh.v2’ and ‘sw2dh.v3’ for reasons which will be apparent. These time histories may be
viewed on Gnuplot by typing ‘plot “sw2dh.v1” w lines’ for example. Of course excel may also be
used.

The following sequence of runs should be followed:

1. With other default values, change time step, to determine whether results are affected.
2. With other default values, vary velocity. Investigate influence on velocity fluctuations and
concentration fluctuations. Determine the Strouhal number, equal to fD/U, where f is the
frequency of velocity fluctuations.
3. With other default values, vary water depth. Investigate the affect of stability parameter S on
velocity and concentration fluctuations and magnitudes. S should vary between 0.1 and 1.0.
4. With other default values, vary friction coefficient. Investigate affect of stability parameter on
velocity and concentration fluctuations and magnitudes. Compare with 3. Does S define the
flow?

The exercise should be written up in the usual way for a lab experiment with sections: Summary,
Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion, Conclusions.

CompHyd.9 2