Nonuniform sediment transport in alluvial rivers

Abstract

A correction factor has been developed in this paper to account for the hiding and exposure mechanism of nonuniform sediment transport. This factor is assumed to be a function of the hidden and exposed probabilities, which are stochastically related to the size and gradation of bed materials. Based on this concept, the formulas to calculate the critical shear stress of incipient motion and the fractional bed-load and suspended load transport rates of nonuniform sediment have been established. These formulas have been tested against a wide range of laboratory and field data and compared with several other existing empirical methods. The predictions by these newly proposed formulas are very good.