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1029/2003WR003001, 2004
Hongwu Tang
School of Hydroelectric Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, China
Lijun Zhu
Department of River and Harbour Engineering, Nanjing Hydraulic Research Institute, Nanjing, China
Received 30 December 2003; revised 19 March 2004; accepted 30 March 2004; published 15 May 2004.
[1] Many formulas available in the literature for computing sediment transport rates are
often expressed in terms of time mean variables such as time mean bed shear stress or flow
velocity, while effects of turbulence intensity, e.g., bed shear stress fluctuation, on
sediment transport were seldom considered. This may be due to the fact that turbulence
fluctuation is relatively limited in laboratory open-channel flows, which are often used for
conducting sediment transport experiments. However, turbulence intensity could be
markedly enhanced in practice. This note presents an analytical method to compute bed
load transport by including effects of fluctuations in the bed shear stress. The analytical
results obtained show that the transport rate enhanced by turbulence can be expressed as a
simple function of the relative fluctuation of the bed shear stress. The results are also
verified using data that were collected recently from specifically designed laboratory
experiments. The present analysis is applicable largely for the condition of a flat bed that is
INDEX TERMS: 4558
comprised of uniform sand particles subject to unidirectional flows.
Oceanography: Physical: Sediment transport; 4568 Oceanography: Physical: Turbulence, diffusion, and
mixing processes; 7863 Space Plasma Physics: Turbulence; 7859 Space Plasma Physics: Transport processes;
KEYWORDS: bed shear stress, bed load, fluctuation, laminar, probability, sediment transport
Citation: Cheng, N.-S., H. Tang, and L. Zhu (2004), Evaluation of bed load transport subject to high shear stress fluctuations, Water
Resour. Res., 40, W05601, doi:10.1029/2003WR003001.
1. Introduction
[2] Turbulent flows can be characterized using time mean
flow parameters and corresponding fluctuating intensities,
so turbulence effects on sediment transport may generally
comprise those due to the time mean flow as well as those
associated with the turbulence intensity. However, previous
studies of sediment transport are largely based on the
information of the mean flow behavior such that most
equations for bed load transport rate are only associated
with the time mean bed shear stress or flow velocity. This
may be because many sediment transport experiments are
conducted under uniform flow conditions, where the variation of the near-bed turbulence intensity is usually limited.
For example, in uniform open channel flows, the fluctuation
or turbulence intensity of the streamwise velocity, expressed
as the ratio of its RMS to time mean values, varies from
12% to 32% [Nezu and Nakagawa, 1993] and thus turbulence effects on the particle motion may not be easily
noticed in such laboratory experiments.
[3] In comparison, many practical situations are associated with widely varying turbulence intensities due to flow
Copyright 2004 by the American Geophysical Union.
0043-1397/04/2003WR003001
W05601
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W05601
f tfL dt
tmin
where tmin and tmax represent the range of the bed shear
stress variation. Equation (1) was previously adopted by
Girgis [1977] [see also Grass and Ayoub, 1982], but the
proposed approaches for evaluating the two functions, f(t)
and fL, were empirical, which finally caused the verification of equation (1) incomplete. Other formulations similar
to equation (1) have also been proposed by Lopez and
Garcia [2001] for computing the risk of sediment erosion
and by Garcia et al. [1999] for investigating navigationinduced sediment resuspension.
[8] In this note, equation (1) is analytically evaluated.
First, theoretical formulations of f(t) and fL are introduced
so that turbulence effects on bed load transport can be
theoretically explored using equation (1). Then, the analytical results obtained are compared with experimental data. To
facilitate all analyses conducted in this study, the condition to
be considered is limited to a flat bed, which is comprised of
uniform sand particles subject to unidirectional flows.
W05601
ln
1
I
6
7
1
tmean
6
7
f t p exp6
7 2
2
4
5
2 ln1 I
2p1 I 2 t
p D2
1p t
t a1
n
DgDp
p2
D1:5
1p *
p
where fL = q/ DgD3 = dimensionless bed load transport
rate for laminar flows, and a2 = coefficient. Furthermore, for
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W05601
W05601
a flat sand bed, we may assume that the shear stress is small
so that the following approximation can be taken:
p2
0:0773t4*L D1:16
*
1p
fT
1
0:773t*3 D*2:66 p exp
2p1 I 2
0
2
! 3
p 2
t*
6
ln ln 1 I 2 7
6
7
t*
6
7
6
7dt*
2
6
7
2 ln1 I
4
5
3 of 5
W05601
W05601
4
t
tmean
tmean
3
2
t
t
4
6
3
tmean
tmean
I 8 6I 6 15I 4 16I 2 3 I 4
3
2
t
3
2 I 3 3I I 3
tmean
13
14
Z1
0
t*
p
ln 1 I 2
tmean
4
6
1 I2
15
16
[17] Bed load transport comprises a number of probabilistic events of the bed particle movement, which is closely
related to statistical characteristics of flow and bed particle
configuration. In this study, both kinds of randomness
!2 3
6
ln
6
t*
1
6
t3* p exp6
6
2 ln1 I 2
2p1 I 2
4
fT
fL
fT
fL
7
7
7
7dt*
7
5
t* 4
10
Sh
t t
1:5
I 3I
11
12
4 of 5
W05601
Notation
a
a1
a2
D
D*
g
f(t)
I
K
p
q
S
t
n
tL
tmax
tmean
tmin
trms
t*
t*L
t*
coefficient.
coefficient.
coefficient.
diameter of particles.
dimensionless particle diameter [= D(Dg/n2)1/3].
gravitational acceleration.
probability density function of turbulent bed shear
stress.
relative bed shear stress fluctuation (= trms/tmean).
Kurtosis coefficient.
probability of erosion.
volumetric bed load transport rate per unit width.
skewness coefficient.
bed load timescale.
kinematic viscosity of fluid.
bed shear stress exerted by the laminar flow.
maximum bed shear stress.
time mean bed shear stress.
minimum bed shear stress.
rms value of bed shear stress.
dimensionless instantaneous shear stress [= t/
(rgDD)].
tL/(rgDD).
dimensionless time mean shear stress or the Shields
parameter [= tmean/(rgDD)].
W05601
References
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