On the influence of bed roughness on saltation in inertial regime

In extreme tidal environment, occurrences of saltating pebbles have been observed. The ambition to instal hydrokinetic turbines in such environment requires knowledge on the presence of pebbles in saltation in the water column because they can damage the structures. An experimental study is realized in a free-surface flume with no slope and different bed roughnesses as in marine environment. With fast camera the trajectories of hundreds of spherical particles are analysed. Our study deals with saltation in the inertial regime (i.e., large Stokes number) over fixed beds with various roughnesses. In inertial regime, the bed roughness has more influence on the collision process and the trajectory of the particles than for non-inertial motion where viscous forces play a key role. Jump height and length increase with bed roughness, with height increasing quicker than length leading to a more vertical trajectory for higher bed roughness. The vertical restitution coefficient is shown to increase with bed roughness leading to higher jumps. The initiation of the motion is shown to depend on the bed roughness as well. Power laws of the excess shear stress are proposed for jump height and length, taking into account the bed roughness. The dataset and analysis proposed in this study is a key ingredient for developing quantitative models for particle transport.