Sediment Transport

This book provides a broad perspective of sediment transport in rivers, reservoirs, estuaries, and coastal areas. It deals with the related fundamentals of sediment transport, computational modelling of cohesive and non-cohesive sediments transport, and sedimentation engineering management. Topics include river morphological changes after dam removal, local scour and its monitoring, marsh edge erosion, turbidity dynamics in a bay surrounded by marshes, effects of harbour construction on hydrodynamic and morphodynamic processes in a coastal area, and impact of climate change on sediment yield from a watershed, are discussed. The breath of the topics covered will be of interest to researchers and practising engineers alike. This book contains twelve chapters.

This book is divided into four parts: Part 1 is entitled "A Short History of Sediment Transport"; Part 2 deals with the "Hydrodynamics of Fluid-Particle Systems"; Part 3 is concerned with the "Sediment Transport in Open Channels"; and Part 4 describes the "Sediment Transport in Closed Pipes." The intent of this book was to make each part as self-contained as possible which has made this an exceptional and successful textbook. The brief introduction preceding each part will help the reader become familiar with the topic. This book has been used successfully both as a classroom textbook and as a reference book by consultants involved with sediment transport.

This book treats the subject of sediment transport in the marine environment, covering transport of non-cohesive sediment by waves and current in- and outside the surf zone. It can be read independently, but a background in hydraulics and basic wave mechanics is required. It is intended for M.Sc. and Ph.D. students. The primary aim of the book is to describe the physical processes of sediment transport and how to represent them in mathematical models. It does not present a large number of different formulae for the sediment transport rates under various conditions. The book can be divided in two main parts; in the first, the relevant hydrodynamic theory is described; in the second, sediment transport and morphological development are treated. The hydrodynamic part contains a review of elementary theory for water waves, chapters on the turbulent wave boundary layer and the turbulent interaction between waves and currents, and finally, surf zone hydrodynamics and wave driven currents. The part on sediment transport introduces the basic concepts (critical bed shear stress, bed load, suspended load and sheet layer, near-bed concentration, effect of sloping bed); it treats suspended sediment in waves and current and in the surf zone, and current and wave-generated bed forms. Finally, the modelling of cross-shore and long-shore sediment transport is described together with the development, of coastal profiles and coastlines.

Sediment transport is a book that covers a wide variety of subject matters. It combines the personal and professional experience of the authors on solid particles transport and related problems, whose expertise is focused in aqueous systems and in laboratory flumes. This includes a series of chapters on hydrodynamics and their relationship with sediment transport and morphological development. The different contributions deal with issues such as the sediment transport modeling; sediment dynamics in stream confluence or river diversion, in meandering channels, at interconnected tidal channels system; changes in sediment transport under fine materials, cohesive materials and ice cover; environmental remediation of contaminated fine sediments. This is an invaluable interdisciplinary textbook and an important contribution to the sediment transport field. I strongly recommend this textbook to those in charge of conducting research on engineering issues or wishing to deal with equally important scientific problems.

This book presents observations on the phenomena of fine sediment transport and their explanations under process-related divisions such as flocculation, erosion, and deposition. The text is a compilation of the author's lecture notes from nearly four decades of teaching and guiding graduate students in civil and coastal engineering. Illustrations of fine sediment transport processes and their complexities given in the book are taken from field and laboratory-based observations by the author and his students, as well as numerous investigators. The wide-ranging composition of particles (of inorganic and organic matter), their universal presence and their complex interactions with hydraulic forces make this branch of science a difficult one to deal with in a single treatise. It is therefore essential to study fine sediment transport as an independent subject rather than cover it in no more than a single chapter as many texts on coarse sediment transport have done. Even though the entire coverage is “introductory”, the twelve chapters collectively include more material than what can be reasonably dealt with in a one semester, three-credit course. The book includes an extensive description of the components of fine-grained — especially cohesive — sediment transport. It covers the development of the subject in scientific and engineering applications mainly from the 1950s to its present state. Solved examples and chapter-end exercises are also included. This text is aimed at senior civil engineering undergraduates and graduate students who, in the normal course of their study, seldom come across the subject of fine sediment transport in their curricula. Interested students should have a basic understanding of the mechanics of fluid flow and open channel hydraulics.

Describes and quantifies the movement and storage of sediment in rivers with gravel-bed material, based upon scientific and engineering principles. Papers based on theory and experiment are interspersed with case studies. Until recently, gravel-bed rivers have been under-researched, when compared with sand-bed rivers. There is a heightened interest in these rivers now, due to pressure from water resources, forestry and recreational development in upland areas.

Sediment transport in irrigation canals influences to a great extent the sustainability of an irrigation system. Unwanted erosion or deposition will not only increase maintenance costs, but may also lead to unfair, unreliable and unequitable distribution of irrigation water to the end users. Proper knowledge of the characteristics, including behaviour and transport of sediment will help to design irrigation systems, plan effi cient and reliable water delivery schedules, to have a controlled deposition of sediments, to estimate and arrange maintenance activities, etc. The main aim of these lecture notes is to present a detailed analysis and physical and mathematical descriptions of sediment transport in irrigation canals and to describe the mathematical model SETRIC that predicts the sediment transport, deposition and entrainment rate as function of time and place for various flow conditions and sediment inputs. The model is typically suited for the simulation of sediment transport under the particular conditions of non-wide irrigation canals where the flow and sediment transport are strongly determined by the operation of the flow control structures. The lecture notes will contribute to an improved understanding of the behaviour of sediments in irrigation canals. They will also help to decide on the appropriate design of the system, the water delivery plans, to evaluate design alternatives and to achieve an adequate and reliable water supply to the farmers.

Climate and anthropogenic changes impact the conditions of erosion and sediment transport in rivers. Rainfall variability and, in many places, the increase of rainfall intensity have a direct impact on rainfall erosivity. Increasing changes in demography have led to the acceleration of land cover changes in natural areas, as well as in cultivated areas, and, sometimes, in degraded areas and desertified landscapes. These anthropogenized landscapes are more sensitive to erosion. On the other hand, the increase in the number of dams in watersheds traps a great portion of sediment fluxes, which do not reach the sea in the same amount, nor at the same quality, with consequences on coastal geomorphodynamics. This book is dedicated to studies on sediment fluxes from continental areas to coastal areas, as well as observation, modeling, and impact analysis at different scales from watershed slopes to the outputs of large river basins. This book is concentrated on a number of keywords: “erosion” and “sediment transport”, “model” and “practice”, and “change”. The keywords are briefly discussed with respect to the relevant literature. The contributions in this book address observations and models based on laboratory and field data, allowing researchers to make use of such resources in practice under changing conditions.