Numerical and Experimental Investigation of Effect of Green River Corridor on Main Channel Hydraulics

Abstract

The riparian zones of the river are generally covered with vegetation patches and this makes it important to study vegetation influence on river turbulence. An inter-comparison study is carried out between numerical model simulations and experimental results for evaluating the performance of the CFD model in predicting the hydrodynamics structure with the influence of floodplain vegetation in the meandering channel. The present study discussed the hydraulic characteristics such as primary velocity and turbulent kinetic energy behavior in the main channel captured by FLOW-3D solver using the RNG (Renormalization-Group) turbulence model. The averaged streamwise velocities in the no-vegetation condition at the apex section for the simulated data were approximately 1.2 times the experimental result. The results obtained from the study have shown the capability of the RNG model to capture the shear layer mechanism at the channel-floodplain transition. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.