Sediment Bed-Load Transport: A Standardized Notation

Abstract

Morphodynamic processes on Earth are a result of sediment displacements by the flow of water or the action of wind. An essential part of sediment transport takes place with permanent or intermittent contact with the bed. In the past, numerous approaches for bed-load transport rates have been developed, based on various fundamental ideas. For the user, the question arises which transport function to choose and why just that one. Different transport approaches can be compared based on measured transport rates. However, this method has the disadvantage that any measured data contains inaccuracies that correlate in different ways with the transport functions under comparison. Unequal conditions also exist if the factors of transport functions under test are fitted to parts of the test data set during the development of the function, but others are not. Therefore, a structural formula comparison is made by transferring altogether 13 transport functions into a standardized notation. Although these formulas were developed from different perspectives and with different approaches, it is shown that these approaches lead to essentially the same basic formula for the main variables. These are shear stress and critical shear stress. However, despite the basic structure of these 13 formulas being the same, their coefficients vary significantly. The reason for that variation and the possible effect on the bandwidth of results is identified and discussed. A further result is the finding that not only shear stress affects bed-load transport rates as is expressed by many transport formulas. Transport rates are also significantly affected by the internal friction of the moving sediment as well as by the friction fluid-bed. In the case of not fully rough flow conditions, also viscous effects and thus the Reynolds number becomes of importance.