Unsteady soil erosion model, analytical solutions and comparison with experimental results

Abstract

Hairsine and Rose developed a soil erosion model which described the erosion transport of the multiparticle sizes in sediment for rain-impacted flows in the absence of entrainment in overland flow. In this paper we extend their steady-state solutions to account for the time variation of suspended sediment concentration during an erosion event. A very simple approximate analytical solution is found which agrees extremely well with experimental data obtained from nine experiments. We are able to reproduce the rapid initial increase to a peak in the total sediment concentration, which occurs about 3–5 min after the commencement of rainfall, as well as the subsequent declining exponential tail towards steady-state conditions. We are also able to show that the fraction of shielding of the original soil bed resulting from depositing sediment reaches its equilibrium value on about the same time-scale as the total peak suspended sediment concentration. Interestingly, we find that the masses of the individual particles which form this deposited layer are far from equilibrium, and that there is a great deal of continuous reworking and sorting of this material during the erosion event. Finally, our solution shows that the initial peak in the total sediment concentration is due to the enrichment of this sediment by the finer size classes and that as the event continues their percentage contribution diminishes.