An assessment of the wind influence in local inertial 1D hydrodynamic flow routing

Abstract

One-dimensional (1D) hydrodynamic modeling studies generally do not take into account the influence of wind, although literature experiences demonstrate the importance of this information in some cases. In this context, the present work had the objective to investigate this matter further, studying the influence of wind on hydrodynamic 1D modeling results and proposing an abacus for the rapid verification of the possible maximum influence of a wind on a simulation. In order to carry out the work we propose a modified version of the inertial flow routing method including the wind shear stress. Several tests were performed to assess model stability and to understand further the wind influence on river flow conditions. As a result, an equation and an abacus were proposed to estimate maximum percentage depth variations that can be caused by continuous wind influence under different characteristics of river flow and wind action. Results also showed that it is possible to obtain a stable solution with the addition of the wind shear stress, but time interval values should be carefully selected considering high disturbances due to wind influence.