One of the most anticipated new features soon to come in the next major version of HEC-RAS (Version 5.1) is the option of running unsteady 1D reaches with a finite volume solution scheme. This will be a fantastic addition to HEC-RAS. Gary Brunner recently gave me a brief overview of the new finite volume feature […]
This question (or some variation of it) comes up quite a bit on The RAS Solution: “I have an unsteady flow model. When I run it, it goes completely unstable. What is causing this?” Many times a screen shot of the computation window with the dreaded “red bar” is attached. While the person asking the […]
Have you ever looked at your profile plot from an unsteady flow model and found “walls of water” on top of your bridge? Or just unexplained unrealistically large amounts of energy loss over a bridge? Take this for example: Notice the three large “steps” in energy grade line (and water surface elevation). It’s hard to […]
One of the most frustrating aspects of unsteady HEC-RAS modeling can be the model stabilization process. You know, you’ve gone to great lengths collecting the best survey/topo data and solid hydrology. Then you’ve painstakingly spent hours…possibly days entered all of that data only to find that once you press the “Compute” button, the model crashes. […]
So many of us know that if you experience instabilities at or near your inline structure, you should bump up the Inline Structure Flow Stability Factor from the default of 1 to the most stable value of 3. But what is really going on when you do this? Here’s an example of a RAS model […]
An advantage of running a step-down scheme hotstart run is the ability to spatially evaluate stability issues with difficult reaches. One of the elemental features of the step-down scheme is the artificially raising of the downstream boundary during the hotstart simulation to “drown-out” the reach and effectively create a very stable environment. During the hotstart […]
In the current version of HEC-RAS (v 4.1.0) there are two methods of modeling the hydraulics at a junction for unsteady flow. By default RAS selects the Force Equal WS Elevations (Forced) method, which forces the upstream bounding cross-sections’ water surface equal to the downstream water surface. This method may be adequate for some situations […]