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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Oxford, Mississippi » National Sedimentation Laboratory » Watershed Physical Processes Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #403130
Research Project: Computational Tools and Decision Support System Technologies for Agricultural Watershed Physical Processes, Water Quality and Ground Water Management

Location: Watershed Physical Processes Research

Title: Development of a two-dimensional hybrid sediment transport model

Author
item ZHANG, YAOXIN - University Of Mississippi
item AL-HAMDAN, MOHAMMAD - University Of Mississippi
item Wren, Daniel

Submitted to: Applied Sciences
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/11/2023
Publication Date: 4/14/2023
Citation: Zhang, Y., Al-Hamdan, M., Wren, D.G. 2023. Development of a two-dimensional hybrid sediment transport model. Applied Sciences. 2023. 13. 1940. https://doi.org/10.3390/.

Interpretive Summary: There is a persistent need to predict the transport of sediments by flowing water for river and reservoir management and decision making. Sediment transport is difficult and expensive to measure directly, and measurements have no ability to predict changes to transport rates caused by changes to channels and flows caused by things like climate change or engineered alterations. Sediment transport can be described by mathematical equations using computers, and there is a need for increasing the accuracy and flexible of the approaches that are available now. This manuscript describes the development of a two-dimensional computer model for predicting both the removal of sediments and the accumulation of sediments caused by flowing water in a variety of systems, including rivers, reservoirs, lakes and gullies. Since the model can predict both the accumulation and removal of material, it can provide guidance for reservoir operations, prevention measures for erosion, prediction of development and assessment of mitigation measures for gullies, and the management of rivers.

Technical Abstract: This paper presents the development of a two-dimensional hydrodynamic sediment transport model using Finite Volume Method, based on a collocated unstructured hybrid mesh system consisting of triangle and quadrilateral cells. The developed model is a single-phase non-equilibrium sediment transport model for non-uniform and non-cohesive sediments in unsteady turbulent flows, considering multiple sediment transport processes, such as depositions, erosions, transportations, and bed sorting. In this model, the suspended-load transport and the bed-load transport are solved separately. Based on Taylor’s series expansion, a second-order accurate edge gradient evaluation method was adopted to consider the mesh irregularities without interpolations for vertex values. The multi-point momentum interpolation corrections were integrated to avoid possible non-physical oscillations during the wetting-and-drying process, which is common in unsteady sediment transport problems. The multi-point momentum interpolation correction is capable of maintaining both the numerical stability and the numerical accuracy. Selected examples and application were used to demonstrate and validate the developed sediment transport model.