Erosion Behavior of Sand-silt Mixtures: the Role of Silt Content

Abstract

ABSTRACT Yao, P.; Hu, Z.; Su, M.; Chen, Y.P., and Ou S.Y., 2018. Erosion behavior of sand-silt mixtures: the role of silt content. In: Shim, J.S.; Chun, I., and Lim, H.S. (eds.), Proceedings from the International Coastal Symposium (ICS) 2018 (Busan, Republic of Korea). Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 85, pp. 1171–1175. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. It is well known that critical clay content is key factor controlling overall cohesion of the mixtures and increasing erosion threshold. Besides cohesive clay fraction, existing studies show that non-cohesive silt can enhance bed stability of a sandy bed as well. Many studies were conducted with an artificial bimodal mixture with distinct peaks of sand and silt fraction to understand the role of silt particles. However, it is unclear to what extent a bimodal mixture represents natural sand-silt mixtures. In this study, we conducted series of annular flume experiments on sediment samples collected from typical silt dominated tidal flat...