Investigation of the Free Surface Profile of a Steady Flow around a Cylindrical Pier Using Numerical Model

A numerical model has been developed to evaluate the profile of free surface flow around a cylindrical bridge pier. The Reynolds equations of the shallow waters have been discredited using the finite difference method. The resulting equations were then solved using the explicit MacCormack's technique. For the closed boundary conditions, the free-mirror condition has been imposed with non-uniform grids. The numerical model results were then verified against experimental data and the agreement between them was fairly good. It was also found that for the small values of the Froude number, the model could predict the experimental data reasonably well, whereas for the large values of this number, there were some discrepancies between model results and measured data.