Experimental Study on the Characteristics of Sediment Transport and Sorting in Pressurized Pipes

Abstract

Sediment transport in pipes is an effective engineering measure used to reallocate water–sediment resources and is widely used in reservoir flooding and sediment discharging, river dredging, floodplain area deposition, as well as other projects. An experimental investigation of sediment transport in pressurized pipes, with heterogeneous sediment (d50 = 107 μm) of the lower Yellow River as the experimental material, is presented. This study mainly explored the change law of sediment transport and sorting in pressure pipes with an internal diameter of 0.08 m. The experimental results reveal that the presence of sediment significantly changed the distribution of the flow velocity field. At the same flow rate, the velocity of the lower water body with a high sediment concentration decreased, while that of the upper water body increased. At a low water flow rate, the increase in sediment concentration caused an asymmetric distribution of the cross-sectional velocity. The vertical concentration decreased in height, and the obvious stratification of vertical sediment particles was observed. With the increase in the flow rate, the asymmetry of the velocity distribution significantly decreased, the concentration profile tended towards being uniformly distributed along the vertical direction, and the separation effect of the sediment particles weakened.