Accuracy Analysis of ADCP Stationary Discharge Measurement for Unmeasured Regions

Abstract

Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers(ADCPs) have capability to concurrently capitalize three-dimensional velocity vector and bathymetry with highly efficient and rapid manner, and thereby enabling ADCPs to document the hydrodynamic and morphologic data in very high spatial and temporal resolution better than other contemporary instruments. However, ADCPs are also limited in terms of the inevitable unmeasured regions near bottom, surface, and edges of a given cross-section. The velocity in those unmeasured regions are usually extrapolated or assumed for calculating flow discharge, which definitely affects the accuracy in the discharge assessment. This study aimed at scrutinizing a conventional extrapolation method(i.e., the 1/6 power law) for estimating the unmeasured regions to figure out the accuracy in ADCP discharge measurements. For the comparative analysis, we collected spatially dense velocity data using ADV as well as stationary ADCP in a real-scale straight river channel, and applied the 1/6 power law for testing its applicability in conjunction with the logarithmic law which is another representative velocity law. As results, the logarithmic law fitted better with actual velocity measurement than the 1/6 power law. In particular, the 1/6 power law showed a tendency to underestimate the velocity in the near surface region and overestimate in the near bottom region. This finding indicated that the 1/6 power law could be unsatisfactory to follow actual flow regime, thus that resulted discharge estimates in both unmeasured top and bottom region can give rise to discharge bias. Therefore, the logarithmic law should be considered as an alternative especially for the stationary ADCP discharge measurement. In addition, it was found that ADCP should be operated in at least more than 0.6 m of water depth in the left and right edges for better estimate edge discharges. In the future, similar comparative analysis might be required for the moving boat ADCP discharge measurement method, which has been more widely used in the field.