1D Coupled Climatic Analysis - Speed Improvements

A feature of SVOffice 2009

March 20, 2009

The 1D solution in SVFlux is ideal for the calculation of percolation/recharge in evaluating cover design scenarios. The speed at which models solve is a delicate balance. It is often reasonable to run models 20, 30, 50, or 100 years into the future. During these long model runs the 1D numerical model will have potentially thousands of storm events applied to the top boundary. These storm events alternate with evaporation and precipitation, resulting in an alternating wetting/drying behavior at the top of the numerical model.

Such alternating wetting and drying behavior can result in an accumulation of errors if the calculations are not properly performed. Errors are more prone to happen especially if the top layer contains a sandy-type material. Older legacy software will typically smooth over such errors in order to complete the calculations at all costs. The resulting solution is often compromised.

The difficulty with optimizing calculations is to improve the speed of the calculations while maintaining the integrity of the calculations. Such improvements were obtained with the latest version of SVFlux in the SVOffice 2009 software package. Typical speed improvements between 30 - 80% can be obtained over older legacy software. We encourage you to download the latest version of SVOffice 2009 and examine the models in the "EarthCovers" project. These models highlight the speed improvements and illustrate the use of SVFlux for earth cover design analysis.