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Hindered bedload settling as a model of sand bed planation by water waves

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Abstract

The interrelationships between fluid flows and the surface forms of underlying movable beds are crucial in interpreting sedimentary structures and in predicting hydraulic drag. Energetic flows can erode all features from a sediment bed, and transition to such a planar bed is important to the processes of sediment transport by waves1. The following analysis connects bed planation to a threshold effect in hindered settling with increasing concentration of noncohesive sediment moving near the bed. Calculated fluid velocity from the resulting quantitative criterion for this bed transition agrees with extensive laboratory data2,3 in oscillatory flows.

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Hallermeier, R. Hindered bedload settling as a model of sand bed planation by water waves. Nature 297, 53–55 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1038/297053a0

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