Zoomy: flexible modeling and simulation software for free-surface flows

TL;DR

Zoomy is an open-source software framework that enables flexible modeling, symbolic analysis, and numerical simulation of depth-averaged free-surface flow hierarchies on unstructured grids, enhancing research and engineering applications.

Contribution

It introduces a versatile, open-source platform for describing, analyzing, and solving a wide range of depth-averaged free-surface flow models, addressing limitations of existing software.

Findings

Supports systematic evaluation of free-surface flow hierarchies

Handles unstructured grid discretizations in 1D and 2D

Increases accessibility for application engineers

Abstract

Free-surface flow is relevant to many researchers in water resources engineering, geohazard assessment, as well as coastal and river engineering. Many different free-surface models have been proposed, which span modeling complexity from the hydrostatic Saint-Venant equations to the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations. Particularly efficient methods can be derived by depth-averaging, resulting in dimensionally reduced models. Typically, this yields hierarchies of models -- models with a variable system structure depending on the polynomial expansion of the flow variables -- that need to be analyzed and numerically solved. This description, analysis, and simulation are challenging, and existing software solutions only cover a specific subset of models generated by these hierarchies. We propose a new software framework to address this issue. Zoomy allows for an efficient description, symbolic analysis, and numerical solution of depth-averaged hierarchies of free-surface flow models. Zoomy handles a numerical discretization in one- and two-dimensional space on unstructured grids. With this framework, systematic evaluation of hierarchies of depth-averaged free-surface flows becomes feasible. Additionally, our open-source framework increases the accessibility of these depth-averaged systems to application engineers interested in efficient methods for free-surface flows.