One-Dimensional Moment Model for Flow Movement and Suspended Sediment Transport

In current numerical models for flow movement and sediment transport, the equations widely used are depth-averaged equations which are obtained at the price of sacrificing the information of hydraulic and sediment factors along the depth. To recover the vertical information, usually the 1D flow depth-averaged equation has to be replaced by the 2D vertical model and the 2D depth-averaged equations must be replaced by 3D equations. Such treatment will largely increase not only the computational effort but also the computer storage. In this paper, a set of new 1D depth-averaged moment equations describing flow movement and suspended sediment transport in channels has been derived. The significant characteristics of this new model are that the equations can recover sufficient vertical information of flow and sediment factors without increasing spatial dimension. The theoretical verifications show that the proposed 1D moment model can reasonably simulate the vertical profiles for both velocity and sediment concentration. It is expected that the proposed moment model could improve the simulation ability of current depth-averaged model very much and has a bright future in solving practical problems.