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research article

Scaling behavior of bedload transport: what if Bagnold was right?

Ancey, Christophe  
•
Recking, Alain
September 27, 2023
Earth-Science Reviews

There is a paradox in the relationship between bedload transport rates and flow variables: laboratory and field studies have reported on how bedload transport rates depend on flow variables through a power law, but none of the empirical laws fitted to the data has managed to provide accurate predictions of bedload transport over a wide range of flow conditions. Inferring bedload transport's scaling behavior from data has remained a stubborn problem because the data are very noisy. It is, therefore, difficult to progress on this problem without some informed speculation about how bedload and flow interact. Ralph Bagnold proposed an original theory to resolve this problem. This paper reviews and updates Bagnold's model by separating the effects of flow resistance and efficiency (energy transfer from water to bedload) on dimensionless transport rates phi. Both variables' contributions to transport rates can be parameterized separately for the three transport regimes that Bagnold defined (no transport, transitional, and sheet flow). We also consider two possible control variables: the dimensionless Shield stress tau* and a dimensionless number related to stream power. In the transitional regime, the dimensionless bedload transport rate scales as phi proportional to tau3, whereas in the sheet-flow regime, it varies as phi proportional to tau5/3. We end up with two Bagnold equations: one based on physical principles and involving Shields stress tau*, flow resistance f, a density ratio, and a bed slope; the other based on non-linear regression and stream power. Compared to a large set of laboratory and field data, predictions from Bagnold's model show reasonable accuracy when the bed is plane.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1016/j.earscirev.2023.104571
Web of Science ID

WOS:001087041900001

Author(s)
Ancey, Christophe  
Recking, Alain
Date Issued

2023-09-27

Published in
Earth-Science Reviews
Volume

246

Article Number

104571

Subjects

Physical Sciences

•

Bedload Transport

•

Bagnold

•

Flow Resistance

•

Efficiency Factor

•

Transport Rate

•

Stream Power

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LHE  
FunderGrant Number

Swiss National Science Foundation

200020_204108

Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF)

200020_204108

Available on Infoscience
February 16, 2024
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/203906
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