Finite difference TVD scheme for modeling two-dimensional advection-dispersion

This paper describes the development of the stream-tube based dispersion model for modeling contaminant transport in open channels. The operator-splitting technique is employed to separate the 2D contaminant transport equation into the pure advection and pure dispersion equations. Then the total variation diminishing (TVD) schemes are combined with the second-order Lax-Wendroff and third–order QUICKEST explicit finite difference schemes respectively to solve the pure advection equation in order to prevent the occurrence of numerical oscillations. Due to various limiters owning different features, the numerical tests for 1D pure advection and 2D dispersion are conducted to evaluate the performance of different TVD schemes firstly, then the TVD schemes are applied to experimental data for simulating the 2D mixing in a straight trapezoidal channel to test the model capability. Both the numerical tests and model application show that the TVD schemes are very competent for solving the advection-dominated transport problems.