THE TRANSFER OF SOLIDS IN COMBINED SEWER NETWORKS

Suspended solids are the main vectors of pollution in combined sewer wet weather flows. In spite of being very fine, they decant rather quickly except in the case of light rainfall events rich in organic matter. The part originating from sewer sediment deposits provides a large proportion of organic matter mass. By analysing the content and the volume of sewer deposits at different points from upstream to downstream, it emerges that the main source of this contribution is probably located in man-entry sewers. In one of these, sewer trunk no. 13 in Marseilles, five hundred metres of which were monitored continuously for sediment build-up over three years, the deposit volume grows mainly during certain rainfall events and its surface slope tends to an equilibrium with the (millimetric) particle size. Theoretical bed-load and suspension thresholds have been validated, then analysed for various situations and sections. A typology of the vulnerable areas, in several networks, has been drawn up, as well as a study of shear stress variations during a rainfall event The sediment deposits seem to occur in particular hydraulic discontinuity zones where transport capacities can drop sharply.