​ADH / Adaptive Hydraulics Model

Dynamic Solutions, LLC is the prime contractor supporting development of the USACE’s state-of-the-art ADaptive Hydraulics (ADH) model software at the Army’s Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory (CHL). We are developing the 2-D and 3-D versions of ADH software and providing modeling assistance on a number of hydrodynamic and sediment transport applications worldwide.
ADH is a state-of-the-art hydrodynamic modeling system developed by the ERDC-CHL that is capable of handling saturated and unsaturated groundwater, and one-, two-, or three-dimensional shallow water problems. A version with utilizing a non-hydrostatic implementation of the Navier-Stokes equations is available and valuable for near-field CFD applications. ADH is on the forefront of multi-dimensional models because of two unique capabilities:

1. Mesh adaption: The model has the ability to automatically refine the model mesh in areas where the conditions dictate that more resolution would lead to a more stable and accurate numerical solution. The amount of adaption can be controlled by user-specified parameters.
2. Implicit, adaptive time step: The time step can be determined automatically to control model stability and convergence. This allows the user to set a maximum time step, but ADH determines whether a finer time step is necessary numerically.

These features make ADH especially useful in cases with complex hydrodynamics which are spatially and temporally heterogeneous. ADH is particularly useful for modeling hydraulic structures, levee breach and dam break simulations, and transient processes such as bedload transport, moving vessles, or plumes of constituents. The ADH software allows users to utilize multiple processors and cores on both supercomputers and PC’s, drastically decreasing run times. It has proven to be a novel and robust tool for modeling many types of waterbodies – from rivers large and small to marshes and estuaries.
Dynamic Solutions was the first and is the leading commercial user of the ADH model. Our applications of the ADH model (detailed below) include much of Louisiana Gulf Coast including the Atchafalaya Basin and Lower Mississippi River and Delta, California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and the Kissimmee and Saint Johns Rivers in Florida.
Please read about some of the ADH modeling projects we have completed:

• Cole’s Bayou
• Delta Levee Breach Modeling
• Lake Borgne Surge Barrier Modeling
• Lower Mississippi River Sediment Transport Modeling
• Oil Spill Mitigation Modeling in Louisiana
• S-65E Structure Hydrodynamics
• Sacramento River ADH and ELAM Modeling

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Read more about our Hydraulics & Hydrodynamics Studies

Read more about our Sedimentation Engineering Studies

Learn about our ADH training course