Advanced Circulation Model (ADCIRC)
Finite Element Hydrodynamic Model for Coastal Oceans, Inlets, Rivers and Floodplains

ADCIRC Development Group

Rick Luettich
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Joannes Westerink
University of Notre Dame

Randall Kolar
University of Oklahoma at Norman

Clint Dawson
University of Texas at Austin

Shintaro Bunya
University of Tokyo

Ethan Kubatko
Ohio State University

ADCIRC Development Partners

Coastal Hydraulics Laboratory
US Army Engineer Research and Development Center

New Orleans District
US Army Corps of Engineers

Woolpert Inc

Naval Research Laboratory
Department of the Navy

   

News

Hurricane Katrina storm surge models now available to view. See the Hurricane Katrina Hindcasts page.

Project Updates

1. The ADCIRC model is being applied in Southern Louisiana by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans District to design levee heights and alignments, by FEMA to establish flooding probabilities for insurance purposes, by the State of Louisiana at the Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes to operationally predict hurricane inundation and by the Louisiana State DNR to assess coastal restoration projects. The ADCIRC Development Group has constructed a sequence of models for Southern Louisiana with varying degrees of detail and resolution. The current operational model is S08 which has been extensively exercised, validated and applied. The S08 model contains 314,442 computational points with unstructured grid resolution down to 100m and uses USGS DEM topographic data. For information on the S08 model see:
A. The Creeping Storm
B. A New Generation Hurricane Storm Surge Model for Southern Lousiana
C. ADCIRC Storm Surge Computations in Southern Louisiana
D. Example applications in our example section (Betsy, Ivan, Pam)
E. Hurricane Katrina Forecasts
2. The S10 and S20 models are currently under development. The S10 model partially uses Lidar to establish topography and broad levee and road heights. The S10 model is being completed and has resolution to 60m and defines 602,254 computational nodes. This model will be applied by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans District to study levee upgrades between the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers. The S20 model is fully Lidar based, has resolution down to 20 m and currently applies 2.7 million nodes. The S20 model will provide high resolution coverage from Texas to Mobile Bay.
3. The computational engine in ADCIRC is currently being upgraded from a Continuous Galerkin (CG) based solution to a new h-p adaptive Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) based algorithm. DG based methods handle supercritical flow, handle wave propagation and advection dominance within one algorithmic framework and provide elementally mass conservative solutions. The DG solution provides a highly efficient rout to accurate solutions, by applying high order interpolants (p) with coarser grids (h), compared to CG based algorithms. The DG solutions are being applied to solve the shallow water equations, the sediment continuity equation and transport equations. The DG models are undergoing extensive verification and validation and will be incorporated into release versions of ADCIRC in the near future.
4. Computational grids for the Texas Gulf coast and Mississippi, Alabama and Florida Gulf coasts are being constructed for use with ADCIRC to compute storm surge inundation probabilities for FEMA. This work is being led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans District in conjunction with the ADCIRC Development Group and the U.S. Army Waterways Experiment Station.
5. The ADCIRC model will be the hydrodynamic model component in the Morphos 3D model. Morphos 3D will simulate coastal erosion during hurricanes. The project is congressionally funded and managed by Woolpert Inc. Participants include the U.S. Army Engineering Research and Development Center, the ADCIRC Development Group, Delft Hydraulics and Oceanweather, among others.

 

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