A comparison of two total sediment transport models for rivers

Abstract

Sediment transport in open channels is a challenge to hydraulics engineer. Despite including many probable significant parameters affecting sediment transport in various relationships proposed by different researchers to predict rate of sediment transport in a stream, the wide and generalized applicability is still a far goal. In pursuit of having an acceptable generalized equation for any open channel flow, the dimensionless parameters are selected from widely accepted concepts of researchers and these are correlated with sediment transport rate parameter of Einstein, in dimensionless form, to develop a regression relation. The two proposed simple models have been developed using four river data sets of Brownlie W. R. (1981). Einstein’s dimensionless sediment transport parameter is tested against a range of dimensionless flow parameters for the best correlation for the selected data sets. As a result to analysis, Yang & Lim’s and Duan’s dimensionless flow parameters were selected to finally evolve the models using regression. A performance analysis is carried out to compare the predictability of two models using statistical parameters like Correlation Coefficient, Mean Percentage Error, Discrepancy Ratio and Score using data sets other than those used for developing the models.