Analytical Evaluation of Amplification Factors, Stability, and Error Analysis of Square Finite Element Solution for the Kinematic Wave Shallow Water Equations

Abstract

A generalized error analysis is discussed in this paper to investigate solution accuracy for watershed simulation results using overland flow equations. The total or compounded error for watershed simulations may increase with increasing spatial resolution, scale, and number of iterations to convergence if inaccurate time-step is chosen for the numerical simulations. A relationship is derived between watershed scale error, overland flow plane error, finite element, and node errors. The scale versus compounded error relationship for watershed scale simulations is a function of element spatial discretization level, dynamic time-step criteria, and the relationship between element and nodal errors. The Courant number and wave number space solution is