In this paper, the conservative properties of the Muskingum equation, commonly applied to solve river flood routing, are analysed. The aim of this analysis is to explain the causes ofthe mass balance error, which is observed in the numerical solutions of its non-linear form. The linear Muskingum model has been considered as a semi-discrete form of the kinematic wave equation and therefore it was possible to derive its two non-linear...

In the paper the conservative properties of the lumped hydrological models with variable parameters are discussed. It is shown that in the case of the non-linear Muskingum equation the mass balance is not satisfied. The study indicates that the mass balance errors are caused by the improper form of equation and by the numerical diffusion which is generated in the solution. It has been shown that the classical way of derivation...

The analysis of the conservative properties of the shallow water equations is presented in the paper. The work focuses on the consistency of numerical solution of these equations with the conservation laws of mass and momentum. The investigations involve two different conservative forms which are solved by an implicit box scheme. The theoretical analysis supported by numerical experiments is carried out for rectangular channel...

The paper concerns the untypical aspect of application of the dissipative numerical methods to solve nonlinear hyperbolic partial differential equations used in open channel hydraulics. It is shown that in some cases the numerical diffusion generated by the applied method of solution produces not only inaccurate solution but as well as a balance error. This error may occur even for an equation written in the conservative form not...

Although the Muskingum equation was proposed nearly 75 years ago, it is still a subject of active research. Despite of its simple form, the real properties of this equation have not been comprehensively explained. This paper proposes a new interpretation of the linear McCarthy’s relation. This relation can be interpreted only together with the storage equation, whereas the Muskingum equation can be derived directly from the system...