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Experimental study of gravity currents moving over a sediment bed: suspension criterion and bed forms

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Abstract

In many natural settings, gravity currents flow over a mobile sediment bed as in fluvial outflows into lakes and reservoirs or in submarine canyons in coastal regions. We present experimental results which clarify the near-bed physical processes of sediment suspension, bed form development, as well as the effect of the erodible bed on the mean flow structure of the current. Compared with the flow over a fixed bed, the vertical velocity is directed downward above the mobile bed, indicating therefore slip with an increase in horizontal flux close to the sediment bed. The sediment suspension model developed here allows to determine the spatial evolution of sediment suspension up to maximum suspension capacity, in good agreement with experimental results of Garcia and Parker (J Geophys Res: Oceans 98(C3):4793–4807, 1993) as well as with the present sediment flux measured toward the downstream end of the sediment bed. Effects of local bursts, here intermittently caused by interfacial instability, tend to increase sediment suspension through increases in local shear velocity. Concerning bed forms, near bed scaling criteria suggest that in the present study the bed form consists of ripples with the measured wave length being in agreement with criteria given by Lapotre et al. (Geology 45(3):243–246, 2017). An expression for the ripple growth is given in relation with the theoretical criteria of Charru et al. (Annu Rev Fluid Mech 45:469–493, 2013).

Article highlights

  • Experimental study of the gravity currents flowing over an erodible sediment bed and of the nature of the bed forms established by the current.

  • The developed sediment suspension capacity model enables accurate prediction of the spatial evolution of sediment concentration in gravity currents up to saturation, corroborated by experimental data.

  • The bed forms are characterized using hydrodynamic non-dimensional numbers, with their evolution and growth rates determined through a combination of experimental and theoretical analyses.

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Funding

This work is supported by the French National Research Agency in the framework of the “France 2030”program ANR-15-IDEX-0002.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP, LEGI, 38000, Grenoble, France

    Maria Rita Maggi, Maria Eletta Negretti, Antoine Martin & Emil J. Hopfinger

  2. Univ. Grenoble Alpes, INRAE, UR ETNA, 38000, Grenoble, France

    Florence Naaim-Bouvet

Authors
  1. Maria Rita Maggi
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  2. Maria Eletta Negretti
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  3. Antoine Martin
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  4. Florence Naaim-Bouvet
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  5. Emil J. Hopfinger
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Contributions

M.E.N. designed the experiments, M.E.N. and A.M. performed the experiments, M.E.N. processed the raw data to obtain velocity fields. M.R.M and A.M. processed and analyzed the experimental data. E.J.H. developed the theoretical model. All authors discussed and interpreted the results. M.R.M., M.E.N. and E.J.H. wrote the manuscript. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maria Rita Maggi.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Appendix A

Appendix A

In order to estimate the concentration of sediment in the water column at each time step, image processing is conducted using the zoomed view to enhance the contrast between the background and particles (see Fig. 5b). The image resolution is designed to detect each particle in the water column, estimating its dimensions and radius to derive a reasonably reliable measure of particle concentration. Considering a camera resolution of \(dx=dy=0.13\) mm for the zoomed view, we selectively considered particles with an area larger than 2dx to distinguish them from the PIV particles and filtered particles based on their eccentricity, retaining only those with eccentricity \(<0.8\), indicative of spherical shapes. The concentration is calculated coarsely as the number of detected particles over a specified reference volume, considering the maximum height of the dense flow and the 5 mm laser layer thickness. We made the assumption that all particles had a radius of 300 \(\mu \)m and were spherical. The total volume associated with the particles was computed and divided by the reference volume.

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Maggi, M.R., Negretti, M.E., Martin, A. et al. Experimental study of gravity currents moving over a sediment bed: suspension criterion and bed forms. Environ Fluid Mech 24, 1215–1233 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10652-024-09998-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10652-024-09998-6

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