A moving boundary approach for one-dimensional free surface flows

Numerical analysis of open channel flows has largely confined to using fixed boundaries in the numerical codes. Given the size of the problem domain, using fixed boundaries often taxes the computational resources since the effect of the boundary is transferred on to its adjacent node in the first few iterations. In this work, we explore the performance of a moving boundary in conjunction with central differencing (classical Runge Kutta (RK)) and high resolute (Essentially Non-Oscillatory (ENO)) shock capturing schemes. The performance of this algorithm is tested with flows containing discontinuities. By correlating the velocity of the boundary to the location of the wave front, the results obtained indicate that no flow information is lost. Moving the boundary with time helps in constricting the size of flow domain and thus accelerating the solution to the desired transient state.