Assessment of total bed material equations on selected Malaysia rivers

Abstract

Assessment of total sediment load equations on selected Malaysia rivers was done based on 35 sediment loads and hydraulic data. Four rivers were selected to make this assessment which are Sungai Perak, Sungai Kemaman, Sungai Pergau and Sungai Kurau. These rivers can be divided into three categories based on the river width, with Sungai Perak (300-350m) and Sungai Kemaman (150-200m) can categorised as big rivers, meanwhile, Sungai Pergau (30-45m) and Sungai Kurau (10-11m) can categorised as medium and small river respectively. The total sediment load equations used in this assessment are Ackers-White, Brownlie, Engelund-Hansen, Graf, Molinas-Wu, Karim-Kennedy and Yang. This paper also tested the local total sediment load equations by Ariffin and Sinnakaudan et al. to evaluate capabilities of the equations on different rivers in Malaysia. The graphs of the calculated equations versus measured sediment transport rates were plotted to shows the accuracy of the tested equations.