Author(s): A. F. Gessese; M. Sellier; E. Van Houten; G. Smart

Linked Author(s):

Keywords: Shallow water flows; Bed topography; Free surface data; Inverse analytical solution

Abstract: The knowledge of bed topography is important to study the hydrodynamics of open channel flows, fluvial hydraulics, or flood propagation to name but a few. Known channel bed topography allows one to computationally predict the free surface profile in different flow scenarios and predict critical quantities such as flood coverage. The direct measurement of the bed topography is a timeconsuming and costly activity. This motivates the present work which proposes two algorithms which can reconstruct the bed topography from a known free surface elevation profile. We show that this inverse problem is governed by a differential equation which is only a slight modification of the standard shallow water equation. Hence, the inverse problem can be solved in "one shot" by solving this differential equation numerically. We also show that a one dimensional riverbed can be reconstructed using a pseudo-analytical approach. These reconstruction strategies are successfully tested on a set of experimental data.

DOI:

Year: 2011