JWSS - Journal of Water and Soil Science

Many sediment transport equations have been developed for estimation of the river sediment materials during the past four decades. There are significant differences in the results from these equations when applied to compute sediment transport for a specific river. Therefore, application of an equation for estimation of a river sediment load is not an easy task. In this study, 12 important sediment transport equations including Meyer-Peter and Muller, Einstein, Bagnold, Engelund and Hansen. Toffaleti, Ackers and White, Yang, Van Rijn, Wiuff, Samaga et al, Beg and Fazel were tested against the measured field data of four major Khuzestan rivers, namely, the Karoon, the Dez, the Karkheh, and the Maroon. For accurate results and rapid computation, a computer program was developed for this purpose. Over 490 measured data from the gauging stations of these rivers are selected. Using these data, the hydraulic parameters and the bed material of the gauging stations are determined.

The results of the computer program are analyzed and compared with the measured data. The results from this study show that those equations which are based on the energy exchange of the flow, are generally in good agreement with the measured data for Khuzestan Rivers. From these equations, the Engelund and Hansen’s equation generally predicts satisfactory results for the all gauging stations except for the Maroon River gauging station. And finally if the sediment load computed by the Beg’s method is multiplied by a factor of 0.1, the results approximately match those obtained from the Engelund and Hansen’s method.

While the mass density current penetrates the stagnant fluid, a plunge point occurs. In this regard, the boundary of the dense fluid with ambient fluid is determined at the plunge point height. In this research, the hydraulic parameters of the dense flow and the bed slope of the stagnant fluid which have a significant effect on the plunge point have been investigated under the two turbulence models: the k- and the RNG at the Flow-3D model. To achieve the purpose of this research, a physical model was set up at the hydraulics laboratory of Shahid Chamran University (SCU), Ahwaz, Iran. Then, using the Flow-3D model with both the k- and the RNG turbulence model, the height of the plunge point was simulated according to the same experimental condition. Findings showed that the predicted depth under the RNG model is closer to the results of the physical model. For example, the k- and RNG model for the 12% slope can estimate the plunge point depth by 30% and 12.28% respectively more than the experimental data. However, for all the slopes, the k-e model can on average overestimate by 27% and RNG model 10.5% more than the results of experimental data. The statistical analysis showed that the RNG model predicts the plunge point depths with a satisfactory precision.