Implicit schemes with large time step for non-linear equations: application to river flow hydraulics

Abstract

In this work, first-order upwind implicit schemes are considered. The traditional tridiagonal scheme is rewritten as a sum of two bidiagonal schemes in order to produce a simpler method better suited for unsteady transcritical flows. On the other hand, the origin of the instabilities associated to the use of upwind implicit methods for shock propagations is identified and a new stability condition for non-linear problems is proposed. This modification produces a robust, simple and accurate upwind semi-explicit scheme suitable for discontinuous flows with high Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy (CFL) numbers.

The discretization at the boundaries is based on the condition of global mass conservation thus enabling a fully conservative solution for all kind of boundary conditions.

The performance of the proposed technique will be shown in the solution of the inviscid Burgers' equation, in an ideal dambreak test case, in some steady open channel flow test cases with analytical solution and in a realistic flood routing problem, where stable and accurate solutions will be presented using CFL values up to 100.