Boundary Shear Stress and Roughness Over Mobile Alluvial Beds
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 116, Issue 12
Abstract
The resistance to flow in the turbulent rough‐flow range depends primarily upon the size, shape, and arrangement of the granular material making up the boundary. We have estimated the hydraulic roughness of mobile alluvial surfaces by inverting sediment‐transport formulas to solve for the local boundary shear stress required to predict the observed sediment flux and size. Inserting this shear stress value and a near‐bed velocity measurement into the law of the wall yields the roughness scale, defined as the height above the bed where velocity goes to zero. If the roughness is related to the coarse fraction of the bedload, such as then This roughness, obtained from mobile, naturally packed, and heterogeneous‐in‐size beds is three times greater than that predicted by the Nikuradse formula developed from nearly uniform and smoothly packed surfaces. We detect no variation in roughness with transport stage, implying that the large static and slowly moving grains determine flow resistance and that momentum extraction by saltating grains is minor. Application of this simple roughness algorithm allows convenient and accurate calculation of the local boundary shear stress.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 116 • Issue 12 • December 1990
Pages: 1495 - 1511
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 ASCE.
History
Published online: Dec 1, 1990
Published in print: Dec 1990
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