Effect of stress history on sediment transport and channel adjustment in graded gravel-bed rivers

With the increasing attention on environmental flow management for the maintenance of habitat diversity and ecosystem health of mountain gravel-bed rivers, much interest has been paid to how inter-flood low flow can affect gravel-bed river morphodynamics during subsequent flood events. Previous rese...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: An, Chenge, Hassan, Marwan A., Ferrer Boix, Carles|||0000-0002-5605-8979, Fu, Xudong
Format: article
Publication Date:2021
Country:España
Institution:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repository:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/344408
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/344408
https://dx.doi.org/10.5194/esurf-9-333-2021
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Sediment transport
Channels (Hydraulic engineering)
Sediments (Geologia) -- Transport
Canals -- Hidràulica
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Enginyeria civil::Enginyeria hidràulica, marítima i sanitària::Canals i regadius
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Enginyeria civil::Geologia::Hidrologia
Description
Summary:With the increasing attention on environmental flow management for the maintenance of habitat diversity and ecosystem health of mountain gravel-bed rivers, much interest has been paid to how inter-flood low flow can affect gravel-bed river morphodynamics during subsequent flood events. Previous research has found that antecedent conditioning flow can lead to an increase in the critical shear stress and a reduction in sediment transport rate during a subsequent flood. But how long this effect can last during the flood event has not been fully discussed. In this paper, a series of flume experiments with various durations of conditioning flow are presented to study this problem. Results show that channel morphology adjusts significantly within the first 15 minutes of the conditioning flow, but becomes rather stable during the remainder of the conditioning flow. The implementation of conditioning flow can indeed lead to a reduction of sediment transport rate during the subsequent hydrograph, but such effect is limited only within a relatively short time at the beginning of the hydrograph. This indicates that bed reorganization during the conditioning phase, which induce the stress history effect, is likely to be erased with increasing intensity of flow and sediment transport during the subsequent flood event.