Numerical Simulation of the Tidal Bores on the Qiantang River

The tidal bores of the Qiantang River on the East coast of China are simulated numerically based on the shallow water theory. The governing equations, which were traditionally formulated using water depth, are formulated in terms of water surface level, and the fractional-step method is applied in conjunction with a Godunov-type scheme. In addition, the source terms due to bottom gradient are discretized centrally to exactly balance the flux terms. Our numerical simulation produces tidal bores in excellent agreement with field measurements.