Development of Bed Features
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 116, Issue 9
Abstract
The concept of unification, the opposite of branching theories used in biological sciences, is introduced as a new avenue to investigate the behavior of bed features in alluvial channels under unidirectional flow. The approach starts with the theoretical concepts initiated by Exner, according to which the features propagate at speeds inversely proportional to their heights. This leads to coalescence and rearrangement of the general pattern of bed features. Numerical experiments show that an initial large number of arbitrary bed disturbances rapidly reduces to a small number. If one feature reaches the maximum height for given flow conditions, smaller features pass through it. An initial uniform distribution of heights of disturbances slowly changes into a broad distribution of heights with some at the maximum height, similar to what is observed in nature.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 116 • Issue 9 • September 1990
Pages: 1063 - 1079
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 ASCE.
History
Published online: Sep 1, 1990
Published in print: Sep 1990
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