Meshless method for shallow water equations with free surface flow

Solving problems with free surface often encounters numerical difficulties related to excessive mesh distortion as is the case of dambreak or breaking waves. In this paper the Natural element method (NEM) is used to simulate a 2D shallow water flows in the presence of theses strong gradients. This particle-based method used a fully Lagrangian formulation based on the notion of natural neighbors. In the present study we consider the full non-linear set of Shallow Water Equations, with a transient flow under the Coriolis effect. For the numerical treatment of the nonlinear terms we used a Lagrangian technique based on the method of characteristics. This will allow avoiding divergence of Newton-Raphson scheme, when dealing with the convective terms. We also define a thin area close to the boundaries and a computational domain dedicated for nodal enrichment at each time step. Two numerical test cases were performed to verify the well-founded hopes for the future of this method in real applications. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.