Transport Capacity of Overland Flow with High Sediment Concentration
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 20, Issue 6
Abstract
The concept and estimation of sediment transport capacity of overland flows are pivotal to soil erosion, sediment transport, and deposition modeling. There is a limited understanding of the effect of high sediment concentration on the transport capacity of overland flow, although sediments in suspension are known to affect turbulent mixing and settling velocity in rivers. A new functional relationship between a dimensionless parameter involving stream power and settling velocity and the volumetric concentration at the transport limit was developed using a set of flume experiments with slope up to 46.6%, unit discharge up to , median particle size of 0.326 mm, and sediment concentration up to . The new relationship has two theoretical limits on sediment concentration at the transport limit. Under low flow conditions, the sediment concentration is limited by the available stream power. At high stream power, the sediment concentration is limited by the space available in flow to accommodate sediments in motion. As a predictor of the sediment concentration at the transport limit, the new relationship worked very well with the Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient of efficiency of 0.95 and was shown to be superior to empirical relationships based on stream power and other commonly used predictors of the transport capacity for rivers. The paper also shows that formulas for the transport capacity which have been validated and widely used for rivers with high sediment concentrations are inaccurate and should not be used to predict the transport capacity of overland flow.
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Acknowledgments
The work was completed while the first author was on study leave at State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Tsinghua University. Support from the laboratory is gratefully acknowledged. The second author is supported by the Hundred Talents Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The research is also partially funded by National Science & Technology Support Program in the Twelfth Five-Year Plan (No. 2012BAB02B02), and through an internal scheme of the Key State Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Tsinghua University (No. 2011-KY-4).
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Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 20 • Issue 6 • June 2015
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© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 31, 2013
Accepted: Mar 6, 2014
Published online: Mar 10, 2014
Discussion open until: Dec 8, 2014
Published in print: Jun 1, 2015
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