Engineering Modeling of Wave-Related Suspended Sediment Transport Over Ripples

TL;DR

This study develops an analytical model for suspended sediment transport over wave ripples, emphasizing the role of sediment diffusivity with convective transfer, validated against experimental data for various sediment sizes.

Contribution

It introduces a new analytical sediment concentration profile incorporating convective transfer, improving the description of sediment transport over ripples.

Findings

The model accurately fits experimental data for medium sand.

It effectively describes concentration profiles for both fine and coarse sediments.

The approach highlights the significance of convective transfer in sediment diffusivity.

Abstract

The aim of our study is to improve the description of suspended sediment transport over wave ripples. We will first show the importance of sediment diffusivity with convective transfer (hereafter called) which is different from the sediment diffusivity associated to turbulent flux . It is possible to interpret concentration profiles, in semi-log plots, thanks to a relation between second derivative of the logarithm of concentration and derivative of (Absi, 2010). An analytical profile for will be presented and validated by experimental data obtained by Thorne et al. (2009) for medium sand. The proposed profile allows a good description of suspended sediment concentrations for fine and coarse sediments.