Laboratory application of laser grain-size analyzer in determining suspended sediment concentration

Abstract

Suspended sediment concentration (SSC) is an important parameter in marine sedimentology. With the development of technology, many acoustic and optical devices, such as the Laser In-Situ Scattering and Transmissometry, have been designed to measure in situ SSC and grain size distribution. But due to fund or other restrictions, many experiments were only conducted in laboratory, using an indoor laser grain-size analyzer and gravimetric method to measure grain size distribution and concentration, respectively. In this study the laboratory experiment is simplified by omitting the tiring step of gravimetric method. The connections between SSC and other parameters (obscuration, D50 and sorting index) were investigated based on 124 surface sediment samples collected from different offshore areas. A new method is developed for determining SSC in laboratory using a laser grain-size analyzer.