Drift Velocity of Suspended Sediment in Turbulent Open Channel Flows

The drift velocity, at which sediment disperses relative to the motion of water-sediment mixtures, is a key variable in two-phase mixture equations. A constitutive relation for the drift velocity, expressed as a power series in the particle bulk Stokes number, was obtained by solving the momentum equation for sediment with the perturbation approach. It shows that gravity and turbulent diffusion are the primary dispersion effects on sediment, whereas flow inertia, particle-particle interactions, and other forces such as lift are the first-order particle inertial corrections that also play significant roles in sediment suspension. Analysis proves that studies based on turbulent diffusion theory are the zeroth-order approximations to the present formulation with respect to the particle inertia effect. The vertical concentration and velocity distributions of sediment in simple flows were investigated with the two-phase mixture equations closed by the drift velocity acquired in the research reported in this paper. The calculated concentration profiles agree well with measurements when the first-order particle inertial effect is considered. The calculated velocity of sediment coincides with available experiments that sediment lags behind water in open-channel flows as a result of turbulence-induced drag. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)HY.1943-7900.0000798. © 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.