Performance of finite volume solutions to the shallow water equations with shock-capturing schemes

Numerical methods have become well established as tools for solving problems in hydraulic engineering. In recent years the finite volume method (FVM) with shock capturing capabilities has come to the fore because of its suitability for modelling a variety of types of flow; subcritical and supercritical; steady and unsteady; continuous and discontinuous and its ability to handle complex topography easily. This paper is an assessment and comparison of the performance of finite volume solutions to the shallow water equations with the Riemann solvers; the Osher, HLL, HLLC, flux difference splitting (Roe) and flux vector splitting. In this paper implementation of the FVM including the Riemann solvers, slope limiters and methods used for achieving second order accuracy are described explicitly step by step. The performance of the numerical methods has been investigated by applying them to a number of examples from the literature, providing both comparison of the schemes with each other and with published results. The assessment of each method is based on five criteria; ease of implementation, accuracy, applicability, numerical stability and simulation time. Finally, results, discussion, conclusions and recommendations for further work are presented. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.