A depth-averaged two-dimensional model has been developed in this study to simulate the unsteady flow and noncohesive sediment transport due to embankment break and overtopping breaching. The model adopts the generalized shallow-water equations that consider the effects of sediment transport and bed change on the flow, thus leading to coupled calculations of these processes. It computes the non-equilibrium total-load sediment transport and considers the noncohesive embankment slope avalanching. The model solves the governing equations using an explicit finite-volume method on a rectangular grid, with the Harten, Lax and van Leer (HLL) approximate Riemann solver to handle the mixed-regime flows generated by embankment break/breaching and the monotonic upstream scheme for conservation laws (MUSCL) piecewise reconstruction method to reach second-order accuracy in space. It uses a varying time step length that satisfies both the Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy condition and the limitation that the bed change ...

Gravity currents play an important role in many aspects of natural processes and engineering practice. This paper presents a systematic lock-exchange experimental study to investigate the influence of linearly stratified environments and ramp slope on the hydrodynamics of gravity currents. A high-speed camcorder and particle image velocimetry (PIV) are applied to analyze the macro- and microstructures of gravity currents. It is observed that the front velocity of the gravity currents increases first then decreases for both stratified and unstratified environments. However, the density contrast that drives the currents decreases more quickly in stratified environments as the currents descend the ramp, causing more intense deceleration of the front velocity, which indicates the damping of ambient stratification on gravity currents. Based on the thermal theory, a new set of analytical formulas is then developed to determine the front location and velocity at the deceleration stage by considering the ...

This paper presents an optimization methodology to calibrate the nodal demand in the model of water supply distribution systems. The matrix analysis has been carried out to get the sensitive coefficients matrix for the model of water distribution systems. Singular value decomposition is applied to calculate search director of optimization by solving the sensitive coefficients matrix, which is more efficient than the finite-difference method. Two cases are used to show the performance of this algorithm. The first case is a hypothetical water distribution network showing the calculation of the optimization vector. The second case is the application of real-life water distribution system in Hangzhou, China, which shows the determination of the cutoff singular value and the search step size in one-dimensional search. The calibrated model has been also validated using the measured data. The results have shown that the proposed algorithm is reliable and effective in real-time system.