Research Area 2.1: Fluid-Driven Sediment Transport: A First-Principles Approach Joining Geological Observations and Granular-Fluid Physics
Abstract
Fluid-driven sediment transport, in which a flow passing over a granular bed entrains and moves the grains, plays a pivotal role in many natural and engineered landscapes. Common examples include conveyance of sediment through engineered channels, infilling of artificial reservoirs, and dispersal of stored sediment following dam removal or landslides. Applications like these require field-scale models for calculating sediment transport rates over a wide range of flow conditions and sediment characteristics. This is a very challenging task, because sediment transport at the scale of a river depends on the fine-scale interaction of a turbulent flow with many individual grains. Moreover, variations in these fluid-grain interactions through time, or with height above or below the sediment bed, can create different regimes of grain motion, including creep of closely packed grains, a rapidly shearing slurry, or a dilute suspension. Empirical sediment transport models do not explicitly account for this grain-scale physics and can therefore be inaccurate.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 20, 2021
- Accession Number
- AD1200945
Entities
People
- Aaron S. Baumgarten
- J. Taylor Perron
- Ken Kamrin
- Qiong Zhang
- Santiago Benavides
Organizations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology