Study on the influence of ecological vegetation revetment on river flow and sediment environment

Abstract

AbstractThis paper studied the influence of vegetation cover on the river water flow environment and on sediment suspended load movement environment, closely combining the development and construction of new ecological water conservancy projects such as ecological embankments and ecological wetlands with ecological vegetation revetment cultivated on river bank slopes. The glass flume experiment was carried out in the vegetation-water flow-sediment environment. In the experiment, natural straight holly in the early growth stage was selected as the experimental vegetation, and erect type vegetation with uniform distribution of the upper and lower branches and leaves was simulated, and a total of 14 experimental groups were set in different combinations with fixed bed, movable bed, submerged and non-submerged conditions. The measured data of flow quantity, flow velocity and suspended load concentration were achieved in the experiment. The experimental results show that: (1) as to the influence of vegetation on the water flow environment, the vegetation canopy density directly affects the turbulent environment of the water flow, and the greater the density, the greater the disturbance to the water flow environment, and the flow velocity near the canopy will be decreased sharply; (2) in the fixed bed, under submerged conditions, the maximum turbulence intensity appears near z/h = 0.6; under non-submerged conditions, the turbulence intensity near the water surface is largest. In the movable bed, under submerged conditions, the maximum turbulence intensity reaches the maximum in the top and upper locations of the top of the plant, and the turbulence intensity reaches the maximum at the top of the plant under non-submerged conditions. (3) In terms of the influence of vegetation on the sediment suspended load movement environment, the concentration of suspended sediment decreases with the increase of plant height, the sediment content in the tail of the plant belt is reduced to some degree. When the relative water depth is z/h > 0.5, almost no suspended sediment exists. And the sediment-retaining effect under non-submerged conditions is better than that under submerged conditions.