Adaptation of flux-based solvers to 2D two-layer shallow flows with variable density including numerical treatment of the loss of hyperbolicity and drying/wetting fronts

An important feature of the two-layer shallow flow model is that the resulting system of equations cannot be expressed in conservation-law form. Here, the HLLS and ARoe solvers, derived initially for systems of conservation laws, are reformulated and applied to the two-layer shallow flows in a great variety of problems. Their resulting extension and combination allows us to overcome the loss of the hyperbolic character, ensuring energy or exactly balanced property, guarantees positivity of the solution, and provides a correct drying/wetting advance front without requiring tuning parameters. As a result, in those cases where the rich description of internal and external waves cannot be provided by the ARoe solver, HLLS is applied. Variable density is considered in each layer as a result of a bulk density driven by the mixture of different constituents. A wide variety of test cases is presented confirming the properties of this combination, including exactly balanced scenarios in subcritical and subcritical-transcritical scenarios, dam-break problems over bed variations and wet/dry fronts, non-hyperbolic conditions, transcritical exchange flow with loss of hyperbolicity. Despite the complexity of the test cases presented here, accurate and stable simulations are guaranteed, ensuring positivity of the solution without decreasing the time step.