Numerical and Experimental Study of Levee Breach

Abstract:

Levees are constructed along rivers and channels for flood protection. Failure of these levees can cause loss of life and property damage. A better understanding of the flow field from a levee breach allows the decision maker to assess risks and to prepare emergency plans. For this purpose, a two-dimensional numerical model is developed to simulate the levee breach. The model solves the shallow-water equations using the MacCormack explicit, finite- difference two-step, predictor-corrector scheme. The scheme is second-order accurate in time and space. The artificial viscosity technique is used to smooth the high-frequency oscillations in the computed results. The numerical results compare satisfactorily with the experimental results. A parametric study is carried-out to investigate the effect of main channel width, breach width on the computed flow field.