Generalized finite difference method for two-dimensional shallow water equations

Abstract A novel meshless numerical scheme, based on the generalized finite difference method (GFDM), is proposed to accurately analyze the two–dimensional shallow water equations (SWEs). The SWEs are a hyperbolic system of first-order nonlinear partial differential equations and can be used to describe various problems in hydraulic and ocean engineering, so it is of great importance to develop an efficient and accurate numerical model to analyze the SWEs. According to split-coefficient matrix methods, the SWEs can be transformed to a characteristic form, which can easily present information of characteristic in the correct directions. The GFDM and the second-order Runge-Kutta method are adopted for spatial and temporal discretization of the characteristic form of the SWEs, respectively. The GFDM is one of the newly-developed domain-type meshless methods, so the time-consuming tasks of mesh generation and numerical quadrature can be truly avoided. To use the moving-least squares method of the GFDM, the spatial derivatives at every node can be expressed as linear combinations of nearby function values with different weighting coefficients. In order to properly cooperate with the split-coefficient matrix methods and the characteristic of the SWEs, a new way to determine the shape of star in the GFDM is proposed in this paper to capture the wave transmission. Numerical results and comparisons from several examples are provided to verify the merits of the proposed meshless scheme. Besides, the numerical results are compared with other solutions to validate the accuracy and the consistency of the proposed meshless numerical scheme.