Non-Equilibrium Bedload Transport Model Applied to Erosive Overtopping Dambreach

Abstract

Bedload sediment transport is an ubiquitous process in natural surface water flows (rivers, dams, coast, etc), but it also plays a key role in catastrophic events such as dyke erosion or dam breach collapse. The bedload transport mechanism can be under equilibrium state, where solid rate and flow carry capacity are balanced, or under non-equilibrium (non-capacity) conditions. Extremely transient surface flows, such as dam/dyke erosive collapses, are systems which always change in space and time, hence absolute equilibrium states in the coupled fluid/solid transport rarely exist. Intuitively, assuming non-equilibrium conditions in transient flows should allow to estimate correctly the bedload transport rates and the bed level evolution. To get insight into this topic, a 2D Finite Volume model for bedload transport based on the non-capacity approach is proposed in this work. This non-equilibrium model considers that the actual bedload sediment discharge can be delayed, spatial and temporally, from the instantaneous solid carry capacity of the flow. Furthermore, the actual solid rate and the adaptation length/time is governed by the temporal evolution of the bedload transport layer and the vertical exchange solid flux. The model is tested for the simulation of overtopping dyke erosion and dambreach opening cases. Numerical results seems to support that considering non-equilibrium conditions for the bedload transport improves the general agreement between the computed results and measured data in both benchmarking cases.