Effect of Riverbed Morphology on Lateral Sediment Distribution in Estuaries

Abstract

ABSTRACT Yang, Z.; Cheng, H.; Cao, Z.; Guo, X., and Shi, X., 2018. Effect of riverbed morphology on lateral sediment distribution in estuaries. An idealized model is applied to a set of eight estuaries with various transverse depth cross-sections to examine the effect of riverbed morphology on suspended sediment concentration (SSC) distribution. Five estuaries consist of a single deep channel, and three estuaries consist of double deep channels. All estuaries share a set of boundary conditions, including tidal flow, density gradient, river discharge, in an attempt to represent a typical estuary. Under these conditions, model results suggest that both tidal and residual flow fields vary significantly among eight estuaries, resulting in significant differences on SSC distribution, e.g., maximum mean SSC (), location of (), and space uniformity of mean SSC. In most estuaries, the SSC is higher over the left channel than that over the right channel mainly due to the lateral density gradient-generated residual...