Numerical and Experimental Study of Classical Hydraulic Jump

Abstract

The present work is an effort to simulate numerically a classical hydraulic jump in a horizontal open channel with a rectangular cross-section, as far as the jump location and free surface elevation is concerned, and compare the results to experiments with Froude numbers in the range 2.44 to 5.38. The governing equations describing the unsteady one-dimensional rapidly varied flow have been solved with the assumption of non-hydrostatic pressure distribution. Two finite difference schemes were used for the discretization of the mass and momentum conservation equations, along with the appropriate initial and boundary conditions. The method of specified intervals has been employed for the calculation of the velocity at the downstream boundary node. Artificial viscosity was required for damping the oscillations near the steep gradients of the jump. An iterative algorithm was used to minimize the difference of flow depth between two successive iterations that must be less than a threshold value, for achieving steady state solution. The time interval varied in each iteration as a function of the Courant number for stability reasons. Comparison of the numerical results with experiments showed the validity of the computations. The numerical codes have been implemented in house using a Matlab® environment.