The Development of a Rouse-Type Profile for Nonequilibrium Suspended Sediment

In order to fully describe the erosion, deposition and transport processes of sediments, it is necessary to understand the behavior of the suspended sediment profile and how it changes in response to changing external forcings. To this end, an approximate nonequilibrium suspended sediment profile for fully developed, quasi-steady flow has recently been developed and published by the author. This profile was developed analytically, on the form of the Rouse equilibrium profile, with several physical assumptions imposed on the development. In this paper, the original profile development is revisited. The profile is shown to be generally valid for unsteady flow, making it more generally applicable than the original development implied. Also, a more general form of the profile which includes concentration dependent settling velocity is derived, making it suitable for use in approximating observed mud profiles. The proposed profile is compared against numerical solutions to asses its validity.