On the river flow motion in the bend channel cross-section

At the river bed curves, secondary flow normal to the main flow direction are formed. Depending on the channel geometry, there may be several secondary flows in the cross-section, and they may have different scales. Even a small secondary cross-section flow affects the parameters of the hydrodynamic flow and this influence must be taken into account when modeling riverbed processes and researching coast deformations of the channel. Three-dimensional modeling of such multi-scale processes requires large computational costs and is currently possible only for small model channels. Therefore, a reduced-dimensional model is proposed in this paper to study coastal processes. The performed reduction of the problem from a three-dimensional model of river flow motion to a two-dimensional one in the plane of the channel cross-section assumes that the hydrodynamic flow is quasi-stationary and the hypotheses on the asymptotic behavior of the flow along the flow coordinate are fulfilled for it. Taking into account these limitations, a mathematical model of the problem of a stationary turbulent calm river flow in a channel cross-section is formulated in this work. The problem is formulated in a mixed velocity–vortex–stream function formulation. Specifying of the boundary conditions on the flow free surface for the velocity field determined in the normal and tangential directions to the cross-section axis is required as additional conditions for the problem reduction. It is assumed that the values of this velocity field should be determined from the solution of auxiliary problems or obtained from data of natural or experimental measurements.
The finite element method in the Petrov–Galerkin formulation is used for the numerical solution of the formulated problem. A discrete analog of the problem is obtained and an algorithm for its solution is proposed. The performed numerical studies showed generally good agreement between the obtained solutions and the known experimental data. The authors associate the errors in the numerical results with the need for a more accurate determination of the radial component of the velocity field in the cross-section by selecting and calibrating a more suitable model for turbulent viscosity calculating and a more accurate determination of the boundary conditions on the cross-section free boundary.