Integrating hydrological, hydro-geological, soil-physical and hydrodynamic processes by means of particle based simulations

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Günter Meon, since 8/2019
• Subject Area: Hydrogeology, Hydrology, Limnology, Urban Water Management, Water Chemistry, Integrated Water Resources Management
• Term: from 2017 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 380258232

The integration of hydrological processes into models is challenging due to diverse operation scales, such as spatial and temporal scales as well as the complexity levels of the processes. Nonetheless, several tasks in hydrosystem modelling require holistic approaches with a reliable scientific description and its associated simulation concepts of the interaction of water with continuous or discrete media. This includes for instance risk assessment with regard to flash floods, where at least a coupling of hydrological and hydrodynamic processes is essential.The aim of the project is the holistic and fully integrated consideration of hydrological, hydro-geological, soil physical and hydrodynamic processes within one model. The model will be developed as a new type of hydrosystem simulation tool by using the grid-free numerical interpolation method SPH (smoothed particle hydrodynamics) in connection with smart scaling methods. The main difference to common Eulerian methods is that the integration in time is performed over the particles and not over the grid. Even though the SPH method is recently wide spread in hydrodynamic applications, a coupling with related hydrological or soil hydraulic processes is not yet considered; though the method has the potential to do so due to its numerical stability and general expandability. The implementation will be achieved by using the GPU-CUDA framework for Nvidia graphic cards.The dynamic scaling is considered to be an innovative key to perform the inevitable integration of water movement processes in real-world environments. The scaling will be achieved by following similarity concepts originated from soil-physics. Information of the soil and the vegetation will be stored in property fields, which contain the specific parameters as distribution functions. The assignment of parameters to the particles with multiple probabilities reflects the variety of natural systems. The density and velocity of the particles are controlled by information transferred via property fields. The density and velocity of the particles control the dynamical scaling.Milestone 1 is a fully functioning modelling system with detailed process descriptions at the plot scale, while already considering the holistic picture of the mentioned disciplines such as water interaction with the vegetation, with the unsaturated and saturated soil zone. Milestone 2 focuses on the transfer of the plot scale modelling system to larger scales with the mentioned scaling methods. Milestone 3 is the application of the model at the catchment scale including the test and validation with observed data (chicken creek). After the validation, we use the integrated modelling system for applications with high interactions between different process scales. The aim is to achieve a reliable and realistic basis for decision makers in interdisciplinary fields such as flash floods or irrigation in order to assess damage potential or need for irrigation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr.-Ing. Ulrich Maniak; Dr.-Ing. Gerhard Riedel; Professor Dr. Hans Matthias Schöniger
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Dr.-Ing. Phillip Kreye, until 7/2019