15 years of composite modelling to enhance hydraulic structures studies

Physical and numerical modelling may be combined within so-called composite or hybrid modelling. This enables to taking optimal benefit of the respective strengths of each modelling approach, while compensating for their specific drawbacks. Different types of composite modelling may be identified, such as embedding a detailed physical model within a broader scale numerical model, interconnecting different physical and numerical models focusing each on specific processes, or validating a numerical model from experimental data before exploiting the numerical model to generate more results than available from the experimental facility. Besides, specifically in more basic research, composite modelling may also be used to improve in-depth understanding of the relative importance of different processes which act simultaneously in the experimental test and may be artificially separated in numerical simulations. All these advantages of composite modelling are illustrated in this paper through the presentation of several application examples resulting from the experience of the Research Group HECE of the University of Liege.