Modeling Bed-Load Rates from Fine Grain-Size Patches during Small Floods in a Gravel-Bed River
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 134, Issue 10
Abstract
This study investigates the applicability of five bed-load-transport formulas (the Meyer-Peter and Müller, Schoklitsch, Bagnold, Smart and Jaeggi, and Rickenmann equations) to predict bed-load transport rates of frequent, low-magnitude flood events (maximal bankfull discharge) for a mountainous, poorly sorted gravel-bed river characterized by a bimodal sediment-size distribution and spatially distributed patches. For model parametrization, special emphasis was placed on the spatial composition of the grain-size distribution (GSD) to evaluate the impact of preferential removal of sediments from patches with finer sediments on bed-load transport. Three parametrization approaches to the choice of an appropriate sediment size that considered the apparent bimodality of the GSD to varying degrees were tested. The modeling study demonstrated that the incorporation of spatial structure of GSD and its bimodal character has an important impact on model performance—a unimodal parametrization failed to reproduce measured bed-load rates for all tested bed-load formulas; a threshold parametrization approach that considered only finer sediments from the small patches as bed-load source material in combination with the Schoklitsch, Smart and Jaeggi, and Rickenmann equations yielded the best results, whereas the Meyer-Peter and Müller and the Bagnold equations failed to predict bed-load rates for all parametrization approaches. The modeling study thus showed that bed-load formulas are sensitive to the spatial structure of the GSD, which should not be treated as a continuum of sediment size fractions but rather as composition of finer sediment patches to enable an adequate reproduction of measured bed-load data from low-magnitude floods in gravel-bed rivers.
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Acknowledgments
This research was carried out within the framework of the Sediment Export from Semi-Arid Catchments: Measurement and Modelling Project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The writers gratefully acknowledge the work done by three anonymous reviewers and the associated editor whose comments greatly improved the original version of the manuscript.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 134 • Issue 10 • October 2008
Pages: 1430 - 1439
Copyright
© 2008 ASCE.
History
Received: Nov 30, 2006
Accepted: Feb 28, 2008
Published online: Oct 1, 2008
Published in print: Oct 2008
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