Projects
FESWMS & TUFLOW Hydraulic Modeling in the Surface-water Modeling System
Client: PennDOT Districts 2-0, 3-0, and 9-0
Location: Blair County, Centre County, Northumberland County, and Union County, PA
The Surface-water Modeling System (SMS) is a comprehensive graphical environment for one-, two-, and three-dimensional hydrodynamic modeling. The numeric models supported in SMS compute a variety of information applicable to surface water modeling. Primary applications include calculations for water surface elevations and flow velocities for shallow water flow problems, for both steady-state or dynamic conditions.
SMS interfaces with both FHWA's Finite Element Surface-water Modeling System (FESWMS) and the BMT WBM TUFLOW model. FESWMS is a finite element program, while TUFLOW is a finite difference model. TUFLOW is one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) flood and tide simulation software. It simulates the complex hydrodynamics of floods and tides using the full 1D St Venant equations and the full 2D free-surface shallow water equations.
NTM’s staff performed the first 2D hydraulic model for PennDOT using FESWMS, and has since performed three other 2D analyses for PennDOT using TUFLOW. NTM personnel are the only engineering consultants in the state who have this specialized 2D modeling experience for PennDOT. NTM has used the TUFLOW program on three recent PennDOT projects.
