A Modular, Model, Library Framework (DebrisLib) for Non-Newtonian Geophysical Flows

Non-Newtonian mud and debris flows include a wide range of physical processes depending on the setting, concentration, and soil properties. Numerical modelers have developed a variety of non-Newtonian algorithms to simulate this range of physical processes. However, the assumptions and limitations in any given model or software package can be difficult to replicate. This diversity in the physical processes and algorithmic approach to non-Newtonian numerical modeling makes a modular computation library approach advantageous. A computational library consolidates the algorithms for each process. This work presents a flexible numerical library framework (DebrisLib) that has a diverse range of software implemented to simulate geophysical flows using steady flow, kinematic wave, diffusion wave, and shallow-water models with finite difference, finite element, and finite volume computational schemes. DebrisLib includes a variety of non-Newtonian closures that predict a range of geophysical flow conditions and modular code designed to operate with any Newtonian parent-code architecture. This paper presents the DebriLib algorithms and framework and laboratory validation simulation. The simulations demonstrate the utility of the algorithms and the value of the library architecture by calling it from different modeling frameworks developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). We present results with the one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) Hydrologic Engineering Center River Analysis System (HEC-RAS) and the 2D Adaptive Hydraulics (AdH) numerical models, each calling the same library.