Estimation of the suspended sediment concentration in ice-covered channels based on the gravitational theory

• Published in: Journal of hydrology (Amsterdam) 2024-06, Vol.637, p.131337, Article 131337
• Main Authors: Huai, Wenxin, Chen, Hailiang, Yang, Zhonghua, Li, Da, Wang, Feifei
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Energy conservation; Gravitational theory; Ice-covered channels; Suspended sediment concentration; Two-layer hypothesis
• ISSN: 0022-1694
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2024.131337

•A SSC model in ice-covered channels is proposed based on gravitational theory.•A new formula is presented to evaluate Reynolds shear stress.•The proposed model performs well in predicting the SSC profile. Rivers in cold high latitude northern regions usually freeze during winter, thereby forming an ice cover on the water surface. The additional ice cover significantly changes the flow characteristics of the rivers and hence affects the process of water and sediment transport. Understanding the vertical profile of suspended sediment concentration (SSC) in ice-covered channel flows is helpful for investigating the sediment deposition and the bed morphology of rivers located in cold regions. To predict the SSC distribution in ice-covered channels, this study is based on the gravitational theory and puts forward a new SSC model by dividing the flow underneath the ice cover into the upper ice layer and the lower bed layer with the maximum streamwise velocity and the zero Reynolds shear stress as the interface. The calculated results of the new SSC model agree well with the collected experimental data, and the accuracy of the prediction results is evaluated by error analysis. Besides, the differences in the governing equations and the prediction accuracy between the gravitational theory and the diffusion theory are discussed, and thus the pros and cons of the proposed SSC model are illustrated. Although the gravitational theory has the controversial point, the validation results and discussions demonstrate that adopting the gravitational theory to estimate the SSC distribution in ice-covered channels is effective. The theoretical approach used herein can provide some guidance for studying the sediment-laden flow of freezing rivers in high-latitude northern regions.