306 Comparison between Shallow Water Model and 3D Free Surface Navier Stokes Model : a Benchmark Problem of Dam Breaking

Abstract

Most of the existing numerical models for the simulation of free surface flow are based on the shallow water equations. However, in some cases where the flows experience drastic variations in the vertical direction the shallow water model is not adequate. We in the present study computed a dam breaking simulation using both shallow water model and 3D free surface model to evaluate the ability of the shallow water model to reproduce the behavior of free surface in the specified situation. The numerical results from the two models are compared with the observational data.