On the Determination of Ripple Length

Experiment shows that the weight of the bed material can only affect the duration of the development, but not the final size, Λ, of the developed sand waves. Thus, noe of the expressions produced to date for Λ corresponding to any kind sand waves contains γ_s or ρ_s, or both. The size of the particular kind of sand waves referred to as ripples does not depend on the flow depth, h, either, and therefore the length, Λ, of ripples, developed by a two-dimensional flow, can be given as a function of D, and _* only. As an attempt to reveal the behavior of the function measurements were carried out under the supervision of the writer by A. T. K. Fok and C. T. Bishop. The present note is an outline of the results of these measurements.