Dynamic flow-driven erosion – An improved approximate solution

Abstract

Rose et al. (2007) published an approximate solution of dynamic sediment concentration for steady and uniform flows, and this approximate solution shows a peak sediment concentration at the early stage of a runoff event, which can be used to describe and explain the first flush effect, a commonly observed phenomenon, especially in the urban environment. However the approximate solution does not converge to the steady state solution that is known exactly. The purpose of the note is to improve the approximate solution of Rose et al. (2007) by maintaining its functional form while forcing its steady state behaviour for sediment concentration to converge to the known steady state solution. The quality of the new approximate solution was assessed by comparing the new approximate solution with an exact solution for the single size class case, and with the numerical solution for the multiple size classes. It was found that 1) the relative error, or discrepancy, decreases as the stream power increases for all three soils considered; 2) the largest discrepancy occurs for the peak sediment concentration, and the average discrepancy in the peak concentration is less than 10% for the three soils considered; 3) for the majority of the 27 slope-flow combinations and for the three soils considered, the new approximate solution modestly underestimates the peak sediment concentration.