Self-formed straight rivers with equilibrium banks and mobile bed. Part 2. The gravel river

Abstract

Rivers are capable of transporting their own bed material without altering their width. However, a naive extension of the threshold theory of canals in coarse alluvium to straight reaches of gravel rivers leads to the stable-channel paradox: transport of bed material is incompatible with a stable width. In this paper singular perturbation techniques are used to obtain a bed stress distribution which allows a mobile bed but immobile banks at bankfull or dominant discharge. This result is used to obtain regime relations for straight rivers with bed and banks composed of coarse gravel.The analysis, although dependent on a series of approximate assumptions for Reynolds-stress closure and sediment transport, provides reasonable agreement with data.