Turbulent mechanisms in open channel sediment-laden flows

The effects of turbulence on water-sediment mixtures is a critical issue in studying sediment-laden flows. The sediment concentrations and particle inertia play a significant role in the effects of turbulence on mixtures. A two-phase mixture turbulence model was applied to investigate the turbulence mechanisms affecting sediment-laden flows. The two-phase mixture turbulence model takes into account the complicated mechanisms arising from interphase transfer of turbulent kinetic energy, particle collisions, and stratification. The turbulence in sediment-laden flows is the result of the interaction of four factors, i.e. the production, dissipation, diffusion, and inter-phase transfer of turbulent kinetic energy of mixtures. The turbulence production and dissipation are two dominant processes which balance the turbulent kinetic energy of mixtures. The turbulence production represents turbulence intensity, while the inter-phase transfer of turbulent kinetic energy denotes the effect of particles on the turbulence of sediment-laden flows. Although, the magnitude of the inter-phase interaction term is much less than that of the turbulence production and dissipation terms, due to an approximate local balance between production and dissipation of the turbulent kinetic energy, even the small order of the inter-phase interaction has a significant impact on the turbulent balance of sediment-laden flows. The presence of particles plays a duel role in the turbulence dissipation of mixtures: both promotion and suppression. An important parameter used to determine the turbulent viscosity of mixtures, which is constant in clear water, is the function of the sediment concentration and particle inertia in sediment-laden flows.     

An analytical study on turbulence with mixed-flow model and two-phase model

Suspended sediment is carried by turbulent water flows in rivers.Traditional sediment-laden flow analysis treats the suspension as a mixed liquid,and recent two-phase flow model enables separate velocity measurement of the two coupling phases.A simplified theoretical analysis was presented to discuss the differences between the two models in reporting turbulence intensity in experimental research.The turbulence intensity of the mixture is lower than the weighted average of those of the two phases in mixed-flow experiments.The mixture’s turbulence intensity becomes higher than the average of the two phases in two-phase experiments due to the presence of velocity lag.The same set of data may lead to either an underestimation or an overestimation of actual turbulence levels when different models are used.     

LONGITUDINAL DISPERSION IN SEDIMENT-LADEN OPEN CHANNEL FLOWS

Laboratory experiments on longitudinal dispersion in clear-water and sediment-laden open channel flows are reported. Data from these experiments and those available from previous studies indicate that the suspended sediment present in the flow affects the longitudinal dispersion process. The observed velocity distributions over the depth of sediment-laden flows indicate that the velocity deviates from the mean velocity more in sediment-laden flows than in clear-water flows. The velocity distributions over the cross section and secondary flow in the channel are also expected to be altereddue to the presence of suspended sediments in the flow. For these reasons, more dispersion is found in sediment-laden flows than in corresponding clear-water flows. A predictor for the dispersion coefficient in sediment-laden flows is proposed.     

Fluvial hydraulics of hyperconcentrated floods in Chinese rivers

Hyperconcentrated floods, with sediment concentrations higher than 200 kg/m³, occur frequently in the Yellow River and its tributaries on the Loess Plateau. This paper studies the fluvial hydraulics of hyperconcentrated floods by statistical analysis and comparison with low sediment concentration floods. The fluvial process induced by hyperconcentrated floods is extremely rapid. The river morphology may be altered more at a faster rate by one hyperconcentrated flood than by low sediment concentration floods over a decade. The vertical sediment concentration distribution in hyperconcentrated floods is homogeneous. The Darcy–Weisbach coefficient of hyperconcentrated floods varies with the Reynolds number in the same way as normal open channel flows but a representative viscosity is used to replace the viscosity, η. If the concentration is not extremely high and the Reynolds number is larger than 2000, the flow is turbulent and the Darcy–Weisbach coefficient for the hyperconcentrated floods is almost the same as low sediment concentration floods. Serious channel erosion, which is referred to as ‘ripping up the bottom’ in Chinese, occurs in narrow‐deep channels during hyperconcentrated floods. However, in wide‐shallow channels, hyperconcentrated floods may result in serious sedimentation. Moreover, a hyperconcentrated flood may cause the channel to become narrower and deeper, thus, reducing the flood stage by more than 1 m if the flood event lasts longer than one day. The fluvial process during hyperconcentrated floods also changes the propagation of flood waves. Successive waves may catch up with and overlap the first wave, thus, increasing the peak discharge of the flood wave during flood propagation along the river course. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Application of Hausdorff fractal derivative to the determination of the vertical sediment concentration distribution

The Rouse formula and its variants have been widely used to calculate the steady-state vertical concentration distribution for suspended sediment in steady sediment-laden flows, where the diffusive flux is assumed to be Fickian. Turbulent flow, however, exhibits fractal properties, leading to non-Fickian diffusive flux for sediment particles. To characterize non-Fickian dynamics of suspended sediment, the current study proposes a Hausdorff fractal derivative based advection-dispersion equation(H...     

Hydraulic,physical and rheological characteristics of rain‐triggered lahars at Semeru volcano,Indonesia

Lahars (volcanic debris flows) have been responsible for 40% of all volcanic fatalities over the past century. Mount Semeru (East Java, Indonesia) is a persistently active composite volcano that threatens approximately one million people with its lahars and pyroclastic flows. Despite their regularity, the behaviour and the propagation of these rain‐triggered lahars are poorly understood. In situ samples were taken from lahars in motion at two sites in the Curah Lengkong River, on the southeast flank of Semeru, providing estimates of the particle concentration, grain size spectrum, grain density and composition. This enables us to identify flow sediment from three categories of lahars: (a) hyperconcentrated flow, (b) non‐cohesive, clast‐ and matrix‐supported debris flow, and (c) muddy flood. To understand hyperconcentrated flow sediment transport processes, it is more appropriate to sample the active flows than the post‐event lahar deposits because in situ sampling retains the full spectrum of the grain‐size distribution. Rheometrical tests on materials sampled from moving hyperconcentrated flows were carried out using a laboratory vane rheometer. Despite technical difficulties, results obtained on the <63, <180, and <400 µm fractions of the sampled sediment, suggest a purely frictional behaviour. Importantly, and contrary to previous experiments conducted with monodisperse suspensions, our results do not show any transition towards a viscous behaviour for high shear rates. These data provide important constraints for future physical and numerical modelling of lahar flows. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Turbulence characteristics of flows passing through a tetrahedron frame in a smooth open-channel

The turbulence characteristics of flows passing through a tetrahedron frame were investigated by using a 2-dimensional fiber-optic laser Doppler velocimeter (2-D FLDV). Experiments for uniform flows with different bed slopes under both submerged and un-submerged conditions were carried out in a re-circulating flume with glass side walls. The experimental bed was a smooth fixed bed. It was observed that with the tetrahedron frame the mean longitudinal velocity decrease in the retardation zone. However, both the longitudinal and the vertical turbulence intensities are larger than those for the undisturbed approach flow. The tetrahedron frame may reduce the probability of sediment entrainment by retarding the flow and reducing the boundary shear stress. In addition, it may induce sediment deposition in a sediment laden flow by changing the flow direction and increasing the energy dissipation.     

Hyperconcentrated flows as influenced by coupled wind-water processes

Hyperconcentrated flow is a natural phenomenon, which is widely observed on the Loess Plateau of China[1,2]. So far, much research has been done with hyperconcentrated flows in China[1―7], although hy-perconcentrated flows are also observed in many riv-ers in other countries[8―10]. In the monograph edited by Chien[11], hyperconcnetrated flows were studied in depth, involving the physical properties, resistance, sediment-carry behavior and channel-forming pro- cesses. Wang and Chien el al.[…     

Closure relations for mobile bed debris flows in a wide range of slopes and concentrations

Debris flows are flows of water and sediment driven by gravity that initiate in the upper part of a stream, where the slope is very steep, allowing high values of solid concentration (hyperconcentrated flows), and that stop in the lower part of the basin, which is characterized by much lower slopes and reduced speeds and concentrations. Modelling these flows requires mathematical and numerical tools capable of simulating the behavior of a fluid in a wide range of concentrations of the solid phase, spanning from hyperconcentrated flows to flows in the fluvial regime. According to a two-phase approach, the depth integrated equations of mass and momentum conservation for water and sediments, under the shallow water hypothesis, are employed to solve field problems related to debris flows. These equations require suitable closure relations that in this case should be valid in a very wide range of slopes. In the hypothesis of absence of cohesive material, we derived these closure relations properly combining the relative relations valid separately in the fluvial and in the hyperconcentrated regimes. In the intermediate regime, the shear stress is due to the combined effect of the deformation of the liquid phase (grain roughness turbulence) and of inter-particle collisions. Therefore, an approach based on the sum of the effects of the two causes has been proposed, combining the Darcy–Weisbach equation and the Bagnoldian grain-inertia theory.A similar treatment has been made for the transport capacity relations, combing the Bagnold expression of the collisional regime with a transport capacity monomial formula valid in the fluvial regime.The closure relations are expressed in non-dimensional form as a function of the Froude number, of the solid concentration, of the relative submergence, and of the slope.In order to test the closure relation, a set of experiments with mixtures of non-cohesive sediments and water have been carried out in a laboratory flume under steady uniform flow conditions, with different solid and liquid discharges and different grain size distributions. The closure equations are satisfactorily tested against experimental investigation.     

Spatial scale effects on sediment concentration in runoff during flood events for hilly areas of the Loess Plateau,China

The spatial scale effect on sediment concentration in runoff has received little attention despite numerous studies on sediment yield or sediment delivery ratio in the context of multiple spatial scales. We have addressed this issue for hilly areas of the Loess Plateau, north China where fluvial processes are mainly dominated by hyperconcentrated flows. The data on 717 flow events observed at 17 gauging stations and two runoff experimental plots, all located in the 3906 km² Dalihe watershed, are presented. The combination of the downstream scour of hyperconcentrated flows and the downstream dilution, which is mainly caused by the base flow and is strengthened as a result of the strong patchy storms, determines the spatial change of sediment concentration in runoff during flood events. At the watershed scale, the scouring effect takes predominance first but is subordinate to the downstream dilution with a further increase in spatial scale. As a result, the event mean sediment concentration first increases following a power function with drainage basin area and then declines at the drainage basin area of about 700 km². The power function in combination with the proportional model of the runoff‐sediment yield relationship we proposed before was used to establish the sediment‐yield model, which is neither the physical‐based model nor the regression model. This model, with only two variables (runoff depth and drainage basin area) and two parameters, can provide fairly accurate prediction of event sediment yield with model efficiency over 0·95 if small events with runoff depth lower than 1 mm are excluded. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Experimental test of autosuspension

The concept of autosuspension implies that if, in a flow transporting suspended sediment down a slope, the sediment adds more energy to the flow than it extracts, the concentration can rise to an indefinitely high level. This was tested in a small closed duct, with variable slope, connecting two free-surface reservoirs. The sediment-carrying flow could be recirculated continuously from the downstream end of the duct to the upstream end. For each of five sediment sizes ranging from 14 μm to 96 μm, two flows at the same discharge were run, one with zero slope and one with a slope chosen so that autosuspension should have been in effect. Something is wrong with the autosuspension criterion: in each set of runs, equilibrium suspended-sediment concentrations were virtually identical in the two cases. Analysis of the term in the autosuspension criterion expressing work done by the flow to suspend sediment shows that this quantity is much smaller than is assumed in autosuspension, and so the criterion should have been even more strongly oversatisfied in our tests. Although both the energy-expenditure form and energy-contribution form in the criterion have a physical reality, comparison of the two has no relevance to the equilibrium state of the flow; autosuspension is based on an irrelevant system of energy bookkeeping. Suspension must be viewed as limited by factors involving alterations in turbulence structure leading to changes both in boundary resistance and in the ability of the flow to entrain and suspend sediment.     

VELOCITY PROFILES OF SEDIMENT-LADEN FLOW

The time-average velocity profiles of the flows carrying natural sand particles and three kinds of plastic particles as suspension and neutrally buoyant load are measured and analyzed. The velocity profiles of the sediment-laden flow can approximately be divided into two regions - the near-bed region and the far-bed region. Main factors affecting the velocity profiles are viscosity, density gradient, grain shear stress and damping of turbulence due to particles. Based on these physical conceptions, a velocity profile model of sediment-laden flow is developed. It agrees well with the experimental data. The discrepancy is 1.57% for the plastic particle-laden flow and 3.67% for the natural sand-laden flow. In the far-bed region, von Karman constants are smaller than those of the clear water flow.     

Mathematical modeling of the transportation competency of an ice-covered flow

A two-dimensional model was developed to study the effect of ice cover on the transportation competence of ice-covered flows. The model is based on the equations of motion, impurity transfer, turbulence energy, and the ratio of turbulent energy to turbulent kinetic energy with allowance made to the effect of turbulent energy bursts on solid surfaces bounding the flow. The turbulent bursts on solid boundaries of open and ice-covered flows are shown to have no effect on the structure of flows, characterized by their aver-aged characteristics, but considerably change the distribution of suspended sediment concentrations.     

ENERGY DISSIPATION AND CALCULATION OF RESISTANCE AND VELOCITY OF DEBRIS FLOW

I.I~rnoxTherearemanyproblemsfortheresearchondebrisflowmechanism.ThemostimPOrtantandmOSturgentoneisthecalculationofresistanceandvelocityOfdebrisflow.Inthisaspectmuchresearchhasbeencompletedfromtwoapproaches.Oneapproachisbasedonordinaryhydraulicsandmodifiedbyfieldobservationdata,andempiricalformulaeofdebrisflowresistanceandvelocitywereestablished.MOStoftheearlyresearch,suchascalculatingdebrisflowvelocitywiththemodifiedformOfMariningformula,belongedtothisscope.Theonlydifferenceisthattherough…     

Field observations on hyperconcentrated flows in mountain torrents

Field observations on hydraulics and sediment dynamics during extreme floods in two mountain torrents show the influence of man-made constructions such as bridges and check dams, in addition to the sediment supplied naturally by the basin and the channel network, on the formation of hyperconcentrated flows. In the Pyrenean Arás basin, hyperconcentrated flow occurred after collapse of a bridge, which in turn mobilized large volumes of sediment from the stream channel and, subsequently, destroyed a series of check dams. Boulders up to several metres in size were transported in a mixture of sand and fine material. A minimum of 100000 tonnes of sediment were deposited on the alluvial fan during the event. Prior to bridge destruction, mean bedload transport rates had reached 0.4t m⁻¹ s⁻¹ upstream. In the alpine Lainbach basin, the flood was characterized by transportation of large amounts of slope material, including debris flows. Along its main tributary an intensive hyperconcentrated flow occurred during the rising stage, whereas in the main valley smaller flows occurred after failure of check dams. The depth of coarse material deposited reached 80 cm. The effectiveness of the Aràs and Lainbach floods was attained due to exceptional rates of energy expediture. Flood power ranged from 20000 W m⁻² to 40000 W m⁻² on average. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effect of saltating sediment on flow resistance and bed roughness in overland flow

The acceleration of saltating grains by overland flow causes momentum to be transferred from the flow to the grains, thereby increasing flow resistance and bed roughness. To assess the impact of saltating sediment on overland flow hydraulics, velocity profiles in transitional and turbulent flows on a fixed sand-covered bed were measured using hot-film anemometry. Five discharges were studied. At each discharge, three flows were measured: one free of sediment, one with a relatively low sediment load, and one with a relatively high sediment load. In these flows from 83 to 90 per cent of the sediment was travelling by saltation. As a result, in the sediment-laden flows the near-bed velocities were smaller and the velocity profiles steeper than those in the equivalent sediment-free flows. Sediment loads ranged up to 87·0 per cent of transport capacity and accounted for as much as 20·8 per cent of flow resistance (measured by the friction factor) and 89·7 per cent of bed roughness (measured by the ratio of the roughness length to median grain diameter). It is concluded that saltating sediment has a considerable impact on overland flow hydraulics, at least on fixed granular beds. Saltation is likely to have a relatively smaller effect on overland flow on natural hillslopes and agricultural fields where form and wave resistance dominate. Still, saltation is generally of greater significance in overland flow than in river flow, and for this reason its effect on overland flow hydraulics is deserving of further study. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Numerical prediction of turbidity currents on unsteady sediment-supply

A three-dimensional(3D) numerical model of unstable turbidity currents is developed based on the mechanism of sediment transport and turbulence theory.In this model,numerical simulation of turbidity currents without subsequent supply of muddy water was conducted using the same parameters as were used in the flume experiments.The evolution process of turbidity currents of completely losing supplies observed in the experiment was simulated by the model;validation of the numerical model and the algorithm was conducted.If momentarily interrupted process is regarded as a special case of the gradually interrupted,based on the preceding numerical simulation validity,it is feasible to simulate the motion law of turbidity currents under losing gradually supplies.By this method in this article,the characteristic of sediment-laden flow of losing gradually supplies was obtained,as well as its relationship between front velocity and sediment concentration.     

Effect of Sediment Motion Patterns on Sorption of Cadmium Ions by Sediment Particles

I.INTRODUCTIONThefateofmanytraceheavymetalsinnaturalwatersis,toalargeextent,controlledbysorptionprocessesandthedynamicsoftheparticlesthemselves.Thepotentialinfluencesofenvironmentalvariablessuchastemperature,CaZ+,Na+andCI--,dissolvedorganiccarbonandPHvaluesontraceheavymetalpartitioninghavebeenwidelyinvestigated.Forexample,StumnandMorgan(1981)suggestthattheextentofsorptionvariespositivelywithtemperature.Itfollowsthatdecreasedsorptionmightbeexpectedatlowtemperatures,e.g.duringwintermont…     

Derivation of different suspension equations in sediment-laden flow from Shannon entropy

In this study the well-known Rouse equation and Barenblatt equation for suspension concentration distribution in a sediment-laden flow is derived using Shannon entropy. Considering dimensionless suspended sediment concentration as a random variable and using principle of maximum entropy, probability density function of suspension concentration is obtained. A new and general cumulative distribution function for the flow domain is proposed which can describe specific previous forms reported in the literature. The cumulative distribution function is tested with a variety sets of experimental data and also compared with previous models. The test results ensure the superiority of the new cumulative distribution function. Further a modified form of the cumulative distribution function is discussed and used to derive the suspension model of Greimann et al. The model parameters are expressed in terms of the Rouse number to show the effectiveness of this study using entropy based approach. Finally a non-linear equation in the Rouse number has been suggested to compute it from the experimental data.