Size Ratio of Fluvial Grains’ Intermediate Axes Assessed by Image Processing and Square-Hole Sieving
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 143, Issue 6
Abstract
The comparability of grain sizes emerging from different methods are discussed, including image-based grain-size analysis. Waterworked gravel-bed surfaces from laboratory and field experiments are analyzed in detail. Grain sizes estimated using freely available object-detection software are compared with grains measured with calipers by hand. On the basis of laboratory and field data, the pebble dimensions determined by square-hole sieving are demonstrated to underestimate real pebble dimensions by a factor of 0.83–0.86, and pebble dimensions derived from images underestimate the pebble-count measurements by a similar amount. Thus, for the present extensive data set, the software-detected grain sizes can be directly compared with grain sizes gained by square-hole sieving, as they are of the same order of magnitude. These results support future wide-spread use of image-based sieving for grain-size distribution analyses for both hydraulic research and engineering.
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Acknowledgments
The financial support of the Master’s thesis of the first author by the Zeno Karl Schindler Foundation, Geneva and the Erich Degen Foundation, Zurich (#201428) is gratefully acknowledged. The authors would like to thank S. Bertin, for assistance in acquiring the data. H. Friedrich is supported by the Marsden Fund (Grant No. UOA1412), administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand.
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Published In
Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 143 • Issue 6 • June 2017
Copyright
©2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 3, 2016
Accepted: Oct 4, 2016
Published online: Feb 9, 2017
Published in print: Jun 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Jul 9, 2017
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