Multiple Solutions for the Riemann Problem in the Porous Shallow Water Equations

The Porous Shallow water Equations are widely used in the context of urban flooding simulation. In these equations, the solid obstacles are implicitly taken into account by averaging the classic Shallow water Equations on a control volume containing the fluid phase and the obstacles. Numerical models for the approximate solution of these equations are usually based on the approximate calculation of the Riemann fluxes at the interface between cells. In the present paper, it is presented the exact solution of the one-dimensional Riemann problem over the dry bed, and it is shown that the solution always exists, but there are initial conditions for which it is not unique. The non-uniqueness of the Riemann problem solution opens interesting questions about which is the physically congruent wave configuration in the case of solution multiplicity.