Calculation of shallow water flows using a Cartesian cut cell approach

A new grid generation method for the computation of shallow water flows is presented. The procedure, based on the use of cut cells on a Cartesian back ground mesh, can cope with shallow water problems having arbitrarily comple x geometries. Although the method provides a fully boundary-fitted capabili ty, no mesh generation in the conventional sense is required. Solid regions are simply cut out of a background Cartesian mesh with their boundaries re presented by different types of cut cell. For the flow calculations a multi -dimensional high resolution upwind finite volume scheme is used in conjunc tion with an efficient approximate Riemann solver to deal with complex shal low water problems involving steady or unsteady hydraulic discontinuities. The method is validated for several test problems involving unsteady shallo w water flows. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reser ved.