Malpasset Dam Break
We have been using GeoClaw to model dam break flooding problems such as the Malpasset dam break in France. This catastrophic event has served as an important benchmark for the study of dam break modeling. GeoClaw is suited for modeling dam break problems since it is based on shock-capturing finite volume methods---methods capable of dealing with the extreme flow regimes and discontinuities present in violent free surface shallow flows associated with dam break problems. The adaptive mesh refinement allows allows a patchwork of rectangular grids to follow the flood down the winding ravine and river basin, with no a priori knowledge of where the flood will go. This allows floods that typically have highly unusual inundation domains (such as narrow, long twisting river basins) to be modeled efficiently on non-fitted, rectangular Cartesian grids, and using methods developed for those grids.
Click images below to see simulations of the Malpasset dam break.
