Experimental Studies and Analysis on Mobilization of the Cohesionless Sediments Through Alluvial Channel: A Review

Entrainment of river bed particles by turbulent flow is a core matter of study in river hydrodynamics. It is of great interest to river engineers to evaluate the shear stress for initiating river bed motion. The main objective is to calculate transport rates for bed load, to predict changes in bed level which are scoured or aggraded and to design a stable channel. Forces acting upon the particle especially fluid forces which give a major role in the incipient motion of the particle on the rough boundary. For calculation generally use shield's diagram but some other modified methods and approaches are discussed. Modeling criteria are discussed for the hydraulically smooth and rough boundary depending on Reynolds number. In the past, experimental studies on tractive shear stress have been done by many researchers but consideration of lift force to analyze the movement of sediment is very limited. For suspended load transport, a detailed analysis of lift force is required. Based on the study it has been observed that shear stress depends on channel slope not only due to gravitational force but also many other factors like drag force, lift force, friction angle, fluctuations, velocity profile, etc. Complete analysis of these factors provides slope dependency over shear stress. To improve past studies, some factors have been discussed, to give a more correct force balance equation. This is very difficult task to analyze more and more variable's dependency on the slope. Consideration of the possible number of variable holds complete analysis of experimental study. This paper also reviews the effect of particle Reynolds number and relative submergence over critical shield stress.