DESCRIPTION

Technical Description

Flows in rivers, canals and coastal areas are often associated with sediment transport. Bed-load transport is the main transport. During bed-load transport, solids are moved along the flume bottom.

HM 163.71 considers the bed-load transport and consists of a sediment trap, a sediment feed and a pipe system with a pump for delivering the mixture of water and sediment from the trap back to the sediment feed between two experiments.

The sediment circuit and the water circuit of HM 163 are independent systems. This guarantees that the sediment cannot get into the pump or the flow rate sensor of the water circuit of experimental flume HM 163.

At the beginning of the experiment, a sediment bed is made in the experimental section without flowing water. Then, the water circuit is switched on. The flowing water transports the sediment close to the bottom along the experimental section. This bed-load transport can be observed clearly.

A screen basket placed in the water tank below the outlet element of the experimental flume HM 163 is used as sediment trap. Before setting up another experiment, the pump of the sediment circuit delivers the mixture of water and sediment  from the trap back to the sediment feed. The sediment feed is lowered into the experimental section and feeds the sediment close to the bottom. The height of the sediment feed above the flume bottom can be varied freely.

HM 163.71 is not suitable for suspended load transport.

HM 163 can be extended with HM 163.71 at any time.

Learning Objectives / Experiments

- observation of bed-load transport along the flume bottom
  * rolling and saltation bed-load transport
- formation and migration of ripples and dunes together with HM 163.29 or HM 163.46
- fluvial obstacle marks