Experimental and numerical analysis of dam-break waves propagation on vegetated slopes

The main purpouse of the analysis is to study the sudden dam-break waves propagation on vegetated slopes looking at a physical model where a uniform canopy is simulated using small and thin metallic pales. All the analysis aims to the estimation of an expeditious method about the evaluation of the hydraulic risk regarded to the downside of small reservoirs. Furthermore two different numerical models related to the same situation are being done and studied. The models selected for the study are: parBreZo 8.0.1 which is a two-dimensional (2D) hydrodynamic depth-averaged model and ANSYS Fluent that is a three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) . The software parBreZo 8.0.1 solves the shallow-water ( Saint-Venant) equations, which does not consider the vertical velocities and accelerations, while the three-dimensional ANSYS Fluent is based on the Navier-Stockes equations. The significant results of the analysis, like wavefront velocity and water depth, are being studied looking at the comparison between the usage of the two different numerical models ( 2D and 3D ) and the comparison of them with the experimental data from the physical model.