Empirical Determination of Free Alternate Bar Length
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 149, Issue 8
Abstract
A new empirical equation for free alternate bar length at the fully developed state is introduced. The equation is developed on the basis of dimensional analysis and all readily available data. A special effort is also made to align the formulation with findings from existing theoretical and numerical analyses of the development of alternate bars, and more specifically those resulting from a stability analysis of the phenomenon. When applied to the existing laboratory data, the equation results in significantly less dispersion around the best agreement line than that associated with previous empirical equations, yielding 70% of the data within the 20% error range, against 47% for previous equations. It is shown that previous equations perform notoriously poorly in the case of fully rough subcritical flows and all transitionally rough flows, with the present equation addressing this matter. When applied to field cases, the present equation yielded realistic values of bar length, including for large sand streams with high or very high values of relative depth (e.g., the Tagus and Mississippi Rivers).
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appear in the published article.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) through a Discovery Grant provided to the second author. Financial support provided to the first author through a China Scholarship Council is gratefully acknowledged. Contributions by Dr. Ahmed A. Boraey, former Ph.D. Candidate at Queen’s University, who collected from the literature some of the data used in this paper and conducted a first analysis of the data, are acknowledged. The authors would also like to thank three anonymous reviewers and the editors for their comments and suggestions, which were of great help to develop this paper to its present form.
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Published In
Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 149 • Issue 8 • August 2023
Copyright
© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 14, 2022
Accepted: Jan 23, 2023
Published online: Jun 7, 2023
Published in print: Aug 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Nov 7, 2023
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