Modeling the Effects of Topography Heterogeneity and Discharge
Variations on Riverbed Hydrodynamics in a 30-kilometer-long Reach over a
Nine-year Period using OpenFOAM
Abstract
Quantifying the multiscale feedback between hydrodynamics and
biogeochemistry is key to reliable modeling of river corridor systems.
However, accurate and efficient hydrodynamics models over large
spatiotemporal scales have not yet been established due to limited
surveys of riverbed roughness and high computational costs. This work
presents a semi-automated workflow that combines topographic and water
stage surveys, computational fluid dynamics modeling, distributed wall
resistance modeling, and high-performance computing to simulate flow in
a 30-kilometer-long reach at the Columbia River during 2011-2019. The
results show that this workflow enables a high accuracy in modeling
water stage at all seven survey locations during calibration (1 month)
and validation (65 months) periods. It also enables a high computational
efficiency to model the streamflow during a 58-month solution-time
within less than a 6-day wall-clock-time with mesh number, time step,
and CPU hours of about 1.2 million, 3 seconds, and 1.1 million hours,
respectively. Using the well-validated results, we show that riverbed
dynamic pressure is randomly distributed over all spatiotemporal scales
with its cross-sectional average values approximately quantified by a
normal distribution with a mean and standard deviation of -0.353 m and
0.0352 m; bed shear stress is affected by flowrate and large- and
small-scale topographic features with cross-sectional maximum values
following a smooth but asymmetric distribution with 90% of its value
falling between 5 Pa and 35 Pa; and hydrostatic pressure is influenced
by flowrate and large-scale topographic features with cross-sectional
maximum values quantified by a discontinuous and skewed distribution
determined by streamwise topographic variations.