Two-Dimensional Simulation of Hydrodynamic and Sediment Transport in a Gravel Bed Channel: The Salt River

Flow hydraulics, sediment transport, and channel morphological changes of the Rio Salado, Salt River, Phoenix, Arizona were simulated using CCHE2D, a depth-averaged two-dimensional hydrodynamic and sediment transport model developed at the National Center for Computational Hydro-Science and Engineering at the University of Mississippi. The bed material was treated as multiple grain-sized sediment mixtures and simulated by a sediment transport module. Changes in bed elevation were calculated by solving the sediment mass conservation equation. The calculated results were compared with HEC-RAS results and field observation, which showed that the two-dimensional model was more applicable in simulating flood zone coverage, non-uniform sediment sorting and channel geomorphology changes.