In an open channel with a mobile bed, intense transport of bed load is associated with high-concentrated sediment-laden flow over a plane surface of the eroded bed due to high bed shear. Typically, the flow exhibits a layered internal structure in which virtually all sediment grains are transported through a collisional layer above the bed. Our investigation focuses on steady uniform turbulent open-channel flow with a developed collisional transport layer and combines modelling and experiment to relate integral quantities, as the discharge of solids, discharge of mixture, and flow depth with the longitudinal slope of the bed and the internal structure of the flow above the bed. A transport model is presented which considers flow with the internal structure described by linear vertical distributions of granular velocity and concentration across the collisional layer. The model employs constitutive relations based on the classical kinetic theory of granular flows selected by our previous experimental testing as appropriate for the flow and transport conditions under consideration. For given slope and depth of the flow, the model predicts the total discharge and the discharge of sediment. The model also predicts the layered structure of the flow, giving the thickness of the dense layer, collisional layer, and water layer. Model predictions are compared with results of intense bed-load experiment carried out for lightweight sediment in our laboratory tilting flume.
Gravity-driven open-channel flows carrying coarse sediment over an erodible granular deposit are studied. Results of laboratory experiments with artificial sediments in a rectangular tilting flume are described and analyzed. Besides integral quantities such as flow rate of mixture, transport concentration of sediment and hydraulic gradient, the experiments include measurements of the one-dimensional velocity distribution across the flow. A vertical profile of the longitudinal component of local velocity is measured across the vertical axis of symmetry of a flume cross section using three independent measuring methods. Due to strong flow stratification, the velocity profile covers regions of very different local concentrations of sediment from virtually zero concentration to the maximum concentration of bed packing. The layered character of the flow results in a velocity distribution which tends to be different in the transport layer above the bed and in the sediment-free region between the top of the transport layer and the water surface. Velocity profiles and integral flow quantities are analyzed with the aim of evaluating the layered structure of the flow and identifying interfaces in the flow with a developed transport layer above the upper plane bed.
Collisional interactions in a sheared granular body are typical for intense bed load transport and they significantly affect behavior of flow carrying bed load grains. Collisional mechanisms are poorly understood and modelling approaches seldom accurately describe reality. One of the used approaches is the kinetic theory of granular flows. It offers constitutive relations for local shear-induced collision-based granular quantities – normal stress, shear stress and fluctuation energy – and relates them with local grain concentration and velocity. Depth distributions of the local granular quantities produced by these constitutive relations have not been sufficiently verified by experiment for the condition of intense bed load transport in open channels and pressurized pipes. In this paper, results from a tilting-flume facility including measured velocity distribution and deduced concentration distribution (approximated as linear profiles) are used to calculate distributions of the collision-based quantities by the constitutive relations and hence to test the ability of the kinetic-theory constitutive relations to predict conditions observed in these collision-dominated flows. This test indicates that the constitutive relations can be successfully applied to model the local collisional transport of solids at positions where the local concentration is not lower than approximately 0.18 and not higher than approximately 0.47.