Densimetric Monitoring Technique for Suspended-Sediment Concentrations
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 136, Issue 1
Abstract
Suspended-sediment concentration (SSC) in surface-water bodies such as rivers and reservoirs is one of the most important hydrologic data in solving engineering problems ranging from hydraulic design, river restoration, to water quality improvement and water resources management. Presently, obtaining SSC information relies primarily on direct manual collection, which is evidently affected by site accessibility, climatic condition, and safety concerns, not to mention the cost for sampling and laboratory analysis as well as turn-around time. There is need for alternative SSC measurement techniques suitable for continuous and real-time SSC measurements during hydrologic events where data are difficult to collect and are generally lacking or inadequate at present. This study examines the densimetric method to measure SSC, as a means of automated, continuous, and real-time collection in a laboratory setting with realistic sediments. Results showed good linear relations between SSC and the output current (milliampere) from the densimeter, and higher values are obtained from samples of finer particle sizes. The densimetric method performs better for smaller sediment sizes, especially when the sample SSC is high. Preliminary field results show promise in automated real-time SSC observations, demonstrating reasonable agreement with limited direct SSC sample results.
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Acknowledgments
The writers gratefully acknowledge the financial support by the National Science Council of Taiwan, Republic of China (Contract Nos. NSC UNSPECIFIED96-2622-E-035-028-CC3 and UNSPECIFIED97-2622-E-035-010-CC3). The writers sincerely thank those anonymous reviewers for their detailed and helpful comments for improving the manuscript.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 136 • Issue 1 • January 2010
Pages: 67 - 73
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Nov 3, 2007
Accepted: Jul 7, 2009
Published online: Jul 9, 2009
Published in print: Jan 2010
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