BALANCE ERRORS IN NUMERICAL SOLUTIONS OF SHALLOW WATER EQUATIONS

Abstract

An analysis of the conservative properties of shallow water equations is presented, focused on the consistency of their numerical solution with the conservation laws of mass and momentum. Two different conservative forms are considered, solved by an implicit box scheme. Theoretical analysis supported with numerical experiments is carried out for a rectangular channel and arbitrarily assumed flow conditions. The improper conservative form of the dynamic equation is shown not to guarantee a correct solution with respect to the conservation of momentum. Consequently, momentum balance errors occur in the numerical solution. These errors occur when artificial diffusion is simultaneously generated by a numerical algorithm.