The Economic Efficiency of Coordinated Physical/Numerical Hydrodynamic Modeling of Mesoscale Projects

With significant advancement in computational speed, storage, and graphical visualization, there has been a renewed belief that the need to physically observe hydrodynamic processes in the field and laboratory models is obsolete. This attitude is no more valid today as it was when numerical modelers made advances in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Analysis of complex flow problems must regard these two approaches as complimentary, not exclusionary. Any river project, regardless of size, can have significant hydraulic issues that can complicate the design. Often, since only a simple 1-D hydraulic analysis is conducted, the resulting design is un-necessarily conservative and expensive. Worse yet, as we can demonstrate, critical hydraulic issues may be completely missed. This presentation is the second of three presentations documenting advancements made by partnership between the University of Missouri Kansas City, and Water Resources Solutions, LLC to efficiently validate two and three-dimensional numerical models using modest sized (mesoscale) physical models. These physical models, are smaller than the models typically used in the major labs to study large river projects, and larger than the micro-models which provide limited complex hydrodynamic specificity. In the first presentation the authors describe an efficient approach to conducting hydraulic physical models which are used to validate two-and three-dimensional numeric models used to complete the final design of structures and countermeasures. This paper explores the project economics of the physical first modeling approach and clearly demonstrates a significant reduction on overall project costs. The final paper discusses advances and advantages of 3-D printing and associated rapid prototyping methods to construct structural hardscape and design options for the physical models.