Sediment Transport, Part II: Suspended Load Transport

TLDR

The study presents a method that computes suspended load by depth‑integrating local concentration and velocity, and introduces new relationships for bed‑material size degradation and turbulence damping. The method derives a reference concentration from bed‑load transport, calibrates it with measured concentration profiles, and then integrates the product of concentration and velocity over depth. Validation against roughly 800 data points shows that about 76 % of the predictions fall within a factor of 0.5 to 2 of the measured values.

Abstract

A method is presented which enables the computation of the suspended load as the depth‐integration of the product of the local concentration and flow velocity. The method is based on the computation of the reference concentration from the bed‐load transport. Measured concentration profiles have been used for calibration. New relationships are proposed to represent the sizegradation of the bed material and the damping of the turbulence by the sediment particles. A verification analysis using about 800 data shows that about 76% of the predicted values are within 0.5 and 2 times the measured values.