Bed load equation evaluation based on alluvial river data, India

Abstract

The rate of bed load transport in weight per unit width for non-uniform bed material has been computed by collecting the field data of Tapi River, in the monsoon season, for 15 years, at the Savkheda gauging station. The main objective of this paper is to estimate the bed load carried by the river. The rate of bed load transport in weight per unit width is computed using the Shields equation. The mathematical model has been developed using effective shear stress and bed load transport. The proposed bed load equation is tested using the data of the Tapi River for five years. The proposed model is tested using the data of eight different rivers across the globe. A statistical analysis is carried out by computing rmse, inequality ratio, and discrepancy ratio. The proposed bed load equation in exponential form is unique as it can be used to determine bed load transport of any river by changing the value of the coefficient and index. For Tapi and Asian rivers data, the proposed bed load equation shows good agreement between the predicted and measured bed load while for river across the globe require modification.