ON THE PHYSICS OF FLOW-DRIVEN SEDIMENTS (BED-LOAD)

l PROBLEMS AND AlMSSediments may be transported close to the bed, rolling and sliding, as we1l as susPended in the flow. Forvarious reasons the theoretical treatment of the bed-load problem has been exceptionally difficult. Noanalytical solution had been fOund uP to now, beginning with Du Buat (l786), Huebbe (l86l) and DuBoys (I 879). Since the aPProach of Du Boys numerous new attemPts have been catried out, mostly of anempirical nature. Consequently they are not generally valid an…

ON THE PHYSICS OF FLOW-DRIVEN SEDIMENTS (BED-LOAD)

More than three dozen significant formulae for bed-load transport have been developed over a period of more than 100 years with varying degrees of success. Major problems have been the use of completely or partly empirical approaches and too few data for fitting. This paper presents an analytical formulation for bed-load transport. It is based on a balance of forces for the determination of the thickness of the moving bed-load layer and on the determination of the velocity of this layer. The formula derived is compared to a set of approx. 2000 data published by 32 authors. It is demonstrated that the basic form of the MPM-formula is a special case of the analytical solution. The derivation also includes the effect of bed features such as ripples and dunes on quantitative transport.