Project
SEDIMENT TRANSPORT MODELLING AT RIVER BASIN SCALE, INTEGRATING SOIL EROS ION AND RIVER MORPHODYNAMICS
Sediment is the largest water “pollutant” by volume in the world, yet the limitations in current modelling processes still makes it impossible to quantity the amount of sediment eroded from land and transported in rivers. Sediment’s detachment, transport and deposition mostly take place within a thin near-bed layer. Therefore it is imperative for modelling processes to establish accurate representation of flow velocity and the rough bottom shear stresses in the transient and viscous regions of the inner boundary layer. A recently developed friction closure model (Toorman, 2011) has been implemented enabling the determination of flow characteristics for very thin flows (e.g. overland flows or wetting and drying of inter-tidal flats) without application of a threshold depth required when using the classical law of the wall. The main objectives of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of the new friction closure model in physics-based modelling system (Telemac-Sisyphe) to simulate soil erosion in erosion plots and to undertake comparative sediment transport modelling over a river catchment using TELEMAC-SISYPHE and SWAT models. This research is intended to give better insight into the major sources of sediment transported in rivers during a rainy season and it has the potential to provide recommendations on better land management practices for a degraded river catchment.
Keywords: Sediment transport; New roughness closure model; Telemac-Sisyphe; SWAT