Improved HLL Scheme for 1D Dam-Break Flows over Complex Topography

It has been discovered that the shallow water model based on approximate Riemann solvers can produce unrealistic flows in the case of uneven topography and inaccurate solutions of discharge near hydraulic jumps. To overcome these deficiencies, we proposed a new approach to implement the HLL Riemann solver for open channel flows, including: (1) adopting a form of Saint Venant equations which have only one source term representing driving forces; (2) defining discharge at interface and evaluating it according to the flux obtained by the HLL Riemann solver. In this paper, the performance of this new method is evaluated by means of dam-break flows over a channel with triangular cross-section and a natural river valley with complex topography, respectively. Comparisons of computed results with analytic solutions and data measured from the physical model show that the proposed method is capable of satisfactorily reproducing dam-break flows over complex topography.