Consider a horizontal and frictionless channel, which is 1000 m in lenght. A dam site is located at 500 m. The initial upstream-water depth is 10 m, and downstream-water depth is 6 (or 2 or 0.1 m).The vertical dimension of gaz layer is 3m. At time t=0, the dam is broken instantaneously.

I use a space steps of 10 m (100 cells )in horizontal direction and 1 m (10 cells in upstream-water, 6 cells in downstream-water and 3 cells in gaz layer) in vertical direction. A time step is 0.3 s.

I work with a (2-D) model and using implicit scheme for time and hybrid scheme for convection terms.

I use SEM method(Scalar Equation Method) in PHOENICS code for this case but I don't have a best results compared with analytical solution so,

1- Is it the problem in the time step (CFL condition).

2- The simulation shows that the gaz layer has an influence on the free-surface profile; How I should impose the vertical dimension of this layer.

3- What is the significance of the velocity field in the gaz layer.

Thanks

(1). Your mesh size is (100x10), with 100 in the horizontal direction. (2). Have you looked at the solution if you arrange the mesh in (10x100), with 100 in the vertical direction? (3). There are also other combinations, such as 20x50, 40x25. (4). And then you can do non-uniform mesh in each direction. (5). By the way, I am assuming that your software and hardware are optimized for 1000 cells. (a friend of mine complained about the number of a post-processor license in the place he was working, this world leading company has only one copy of the license. So, he has to complain very hard to get the other guy to release it from time to time. I think, he is a subcontractor, so, they can easily ask him to work second shift. I think, the company is right. With more copies of the post-processor, the company can only generate more beautiful pictures. I still think that at least PR needs nice pictures though. Another firend of mine has a habit of generating multi-million cell mesh. In this way, he can use several computer and processors at the same time, so, it can make other engineers hard to get on the computer. Another friend of mine told me that even if he has test data, he still couldn't get his cfd calculations right.) (6). So, try some different combinations of the mesh, unless you have other reasons to use this 100x10 uniform mesh you are using.

Dimensions of the dam, space step of 10 m (100 cells )in horizontal direction and time step of 0.3 s are given in an exemple by J.S Wang ans al : Finite-Difference TVD Scheme For Computation Of Dam-Break Problems; Journal of Hydraulic Engineering/April 2000/ 253.

They don't give space step in vertical direction, so I was do many simulations with different mesh sizes in both directions horizontal and vertical and I changed the time step too in many cases .

I think that the problem is in the depth of the layer gaz or in the mesh size like you asked.

If you know some one who are interested a bout this kind of problem (Dam-break) please make me in contact with him.

Thak you Jhon.

To understand your problem right, could you explain:

-How fast is the shallow-water surface wave-speed in the two compartments before the dam-break?

-where is the gaz-layer?

-how does your code track the surface?

-what is wrong about your results?

It's clear