Abstract
A curved riparian zone can create highly complex flow patterns that have a great effect on erosion, pollutant transport, surface water-groundwater exchange and habitat qualities. The small-disturbance theory has been applied to derive the analytical solutions of pressure distributions along a sinusoidal riverbank. Experiments have also been performed to test the hydrodynamic and geomorphic effects on pressure distribution and to verify the applicability of the derived expressions. The derived expressions were simple, accurate and agreed remarkably well with experimental results for the riparian banks with a low degree of curvature. On the contrary, when a riparian bank had a high degree of curvature, these expressions applying the approach of small-disturbance, could not effectively estimate the pressure distributions for a complex bank boundary or complex flow conditions. Moreover, sensitive analysis has indicated that the disturbed pressures along the riparian banks increased with increasing Froude number Fr, as well as the ratio of bank amplitude to wavelength a/λ. However, a/λ has been found to have more significant influence on pressure variation in subcritical flow.
Highlights
A river’s topographic features interact with water to create highly complex flow patterns [1]
The water pressure heads of different layers on the slope of each cross section of experimental right segment under Fr = 0.53 and a/λ = 0.04 are presented in Figure 3, in which dashed lines dotted with round points, rectangle points and triangle points correspond to the upper, middle and lower layers, respectively
The distribution pattern of water pressures was consistent with the variation tendency of the calculated curve, which indicated that the disturbed pressure heads along the sinusoidal bank-line varied sinusoidally
Summary
A river’s topographic features interact with water to create highly complex flow patterns [1]. It is evident that these flow patterns are much more complicated than those in straight rivers [11,12,13,14]. These complicated flow patterns due to a curved riparian zone have a great effect on erosion, sediment, pollutant transport, and surface-ground water exchange in rivers [11,15] and play a significant role in determining qualities of habitat and environment. Many mathematical studies have been carried out to attempt to gain a clear understanding of the flow characteristics in curved open channels [12]. Hicks et al (1990) investigated the flow in a smooth half trapezoidal channel bend, with particular emphasis on the outside bank details [11,15]
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