A new approach to model weakly nonhydrostatic shallow water flows in open channels with smoothed particle hydrodynamics

Summary A new approach to model weakly nonhydrostatic shallow water flows in open channels is proposed by using a Lagrangian meshless method, smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH). The Lagrangian form of the Boussinesq equations is solved through SPH to merge the local and convective derivatives as the material derivative. In the numerical SPH procedure, the present study uses a predictor–corrector method, in which the pure space derivative terms (the hydrostatic and source terms) are explicitly solved and the mixed space and time derivatives term (the material term of B1 and B2) is computed with an implicit scheme. It is thus a convenient tool in the processes of the space discretization compared to other Eulerian approaches. Four typical benchmark problems in weakly nonhydrostatic shallow water flows, including solitary wave propagation, nonlinear interaction of two solitary waves, dambreak flow propagation, and undular bore development, are selected to employ model validation under the closed and open boundary conditions. Numerical results are compared with the analytical solutions or published laboratory and numerical results. It is found that the proposed approach is capable of resolving weakly nonhydrostatic shallow water flows. Thus, the proposed SPH approach can supplement the lack of the SPH–Boussinesq researches in the literatures, and provide an alternative to model weakly nonhydrostatic shallow water flows in open channels.