Author(s): Roger Alan Kuhnle; Daniel Griffin Wren
Linked Author(s):
Keywords: Suspended sediment transport; Lateral variation; Dunes; Sand
Abstract: A series of laboratory experiments were conducted in a laboratory flume to characterize the lateral variations of suspended sediment over dunes. Forty experimental runs were made using flow depths of 0.33m and 0.13 m in a 1.2 m wide flume channel. The Froude number was 0.5 and the median diameter of the bed material was 0.52 mm. Point samples and depth-integrated values calculated using acoustic backscatter data of suspended sediment were collected simultaneously at two lateral positions at spacings of 0.40m, 0.20m, 0.10m and 0.05 m. Mean absolute differences between the paired point samples were shown to increase and then level off to values of about 40 percent of the mean concentration as the lateral spacing between samples was increased. Mean absolute differences for paired depth-integrated samples had a similar pattern with values of 30% for the largest spacing. The information provided by this study has important implications for the testing of emerging techniques for measuring suspended sediment in fluvial environments.
Year: 2004