Pickup Probability of Sediment under Log-Normal Velocity Distribution

Abstract

This work presents the formulation of the pickup probability for sediment entrainment under the log-normally distributed instantaneous velocity. Herein two mathematical approaches, namely the analytical method and the first-order approximation method, are employed in the theoretical derivation. The results are compared with the published experimental data and the previous pickup probability derived for the normal velocity distribution. The outcome appears to indicate that the pickup probabilities resulting from the two mathematical methods are of the same order of accuracy if the optimal lift coefficients are used. The error analysis implies that the results for the log-normal distribution reveal a significant improvement of accuracy over that for the normal distribution. The overall improvement exceeds 50%.