River banks and channel axis curvature:

Effects on the longitudinal

dispersion in alluvial rivers

Sub: Environmental Transport and Water Resources

Sub Code : EEMP 505
Presented by : Sunita Varde
 Outline
 Introduction (Straight and Meandering river )
 Formulation of problem (Focus on spatial and temporal
scales)
 Set up a rational perturbative framework (Physics based
modeling)
 Depth averaged flow field in alluvial channels
 Comparison with available field data
 Discussion of the results
 Conclusion
 AIM OF RESEARCH
To develop physics based, analytic predictions of the longitudinal dispersion
coefficient,accounting for the cross-sectional morphology occurring in alluvial
rivers.
Perturbative Introduction of Weakly Meandering
Correction K*
procedure reference system character

Multiple scale Longitudinal Presence of

Smith (1983)
perturbation dispersion bends

Dispersion
Various Source
equation based Hydromorphod
Flow field of non
on shear flow ynamic model
uniformities
dispersion

Fast variations
Frascati and
of
Lanzoni (2013)
concentration

Irreregularities
and
Presence of
bends
 INTRODUCTION

Spatial variation
Fate and of flow field
Transport of
Contaminant
Topography

Channel Axis C/S Velocity

gradient
curvature Secondary
Single thread Helical Currents
Transverse
alluvial river Mixing
Moveable bed
deformation
 INTRODUCTION
 The classical treatment of longitudinal transport in turbulent flows

Tylor (1954) • 1-D Advection diffusion (Fickian dispersion Model)

• Advection diffusion in natural streams

Fischer
(1967)

• Variance of concentration along the stream

direction increases linearly due to velocity shear
Chat win and Advection zone )
Allen (1985) • Gaussian Distribution
 INTRODUCTION
 Several procedures have so far been proposed to estimate
the longitudinal dispersion coefficient from either
 Tracer data(Rutherford, 1994) or
 Velocity measurements at a number of cross sections
(Fischer, 1967)
 the derivation of various semi-empirical and empirical
relationships

 The empirical parameters that are introduced in these

relations are rough estimates and there are discrepancies
between which determined from tracer data.
INTRODUCTION
 INTRODUCTION
 Single thread alluvial river exhibit meandering plan form
and bed topography which deviates from plane
configuration
 What is meandering character of river
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a3r-cG8Wic
• In these cases longitudinal dispersion affected by
 Channel axis curvature

 Movable bed deformation

 Secondary helical currents

 FORMULATION OF PROBLEM

 Alluvial channel ,
 compact c/s ,
 Meandering plan form,
 C/S bed is vary slowly in transverse direction
(Assumed), as the banks are approached.
 This assumption allows to adopt closure model of
turbulence for solving the flow field.
 Turbulence closure models are central to a good deal of
applied computational fluid dynamical analysis. ... The focus is
on closure models in which transport equations are solved
for scalar variables.
FORMULATION OF PROBLEM
 2D DIMENSIONLESS ADVECTION
DIFFUSION EQUATION
 The problem can be conveniently studied by introducing curvilinear
orthogonal coordinate system (s*, n*, z*) ,2D advection diffusion eq.
for depth averaged concentration c(s*, n*, t*)

• In meandering channel C/S averaged concentration undergoes

relatively small and rapidly changing gradient :
• To overcome this problem they introduced :
• pseudo langrangian volume to overcome the faster concentration at
meander scale
 2D DIMENSIONLESS ADVECTION
DIFFUSION EQUATION
 Finding: contaminant cloud travels downstream and accounts for the fact that
the cross-sectionally averaged velocity Q*/A*is not constant along the
channel (Smith, 1983).
 After derivation portion : Dilution of contaminant is based on following
factors:
 Transverse mixing
 Differential Advection
 Longitudinal dispersion
 Spatial Changes in bed topography
 LONGITUDINAL DISPERSION
COEFFICIENT
 The longitudinal dispersion operates on a timescale
much slower than the timescale characterizing
transverse mixing which, in turn, is much faster than non
uniform advection (Fischer, 1967; Smith, 1983).
 The presence of different spatial and temporal scales
can be handled employing a multiple scale technique
(Nayfeh, 1973).
 To this purpose we expand the concentration
 c = c (s, n, ξ, t) as:
 c = c0 + ϵ c1 + ϵ c + ⋯
 LONGITUDINAL DISPERSION
COEFFICIENT
 In accordance with Fischer (1967), longitudinal
dispersion induced due to vertical variations of the
velocity profile is of minor importance and is governed
by shear flow dispersion

 Concentration c and velocity U* as the sum of their

cross-sectionally averaged values, c , U*, plus the
corresponding fluctuations c′, U′*, the classical one-
dimensional advection-dispersion eq.
LONGITUDINAL DISPERSION COEFFICIENT
IN MEANDERING CHANNEL
 Meandering plan form configuration, curvature ratio is typically a small
parameter, 0.1 − 0.2 (range) (Leopold et al., 1964).
 Flow field and the bed topography of a meandering channel can be
determined by studying the relatively small perturbations associated with
deviations from a straight channel configuration.
 The longitudinal dispersion coefficient in meandering channels is

 K0 = 0.
 K2 is likely of minor importance when dealing with wide and shallow
sections, so K2 =0 to keep the model at lower level of complexity.
 The solution of the flow field in a meandering channel is available in closed
form only by neglecting the boundary layers that form near to the banks
(Frascati and Lanzoni, 2013).
DEPTH AVERAGED FLOW FIELD IN ALLUVIAL
CHANNELS
 The two-dimensional equations of mass and momentum conservation are
obtained by depth-averaging the three-dimensional equations,
 Dynamic effects of secondary flows induced by curvature and of the
boundary layers that form near to the channel banks
 DEPTH AVERAGED FLOW FIELD IN
ALLUVIAL CHANNELS
 Secondary flow circulations driven by the curvature of streamlines and the
deformation of the channel bed on the outer bank of a bend (Seminara,
2006).
 They found that the studies still require a large computational effort to
correctly include the effects of secondary helical flow (Bolla Pittaluga and
Seminara, 2011; Eke et al., 2014).
 This is the reason they liberalized models have been widely adopted to
investigate the physics of river meandering (Seminara, 2006), the long-term
evolution of alluvial rivers (Bogoni et al., 2017; Frascati and Lanzoni, 2009;
Howard, 1992).
 To develope the liberalized hydro-Morpho dynamic model, they need to
make some assumptions
 Channel variations across the cross section width are mild.
 Two-dimensional, depth averaged, shallow water equations
 Written in the curvilinear coordinates s, n and, usually observed in natural
rivers, neglects the presence of the near bank boundary layers.
 ASSUMPTIONS
 Resulting set of partial differential equations based on the fact that,
in natural channels, the curvature ratio ν is small (ranging in the
interval 0.1–0.2),
 Also assume that flow and topography perturbations originating
from deviations of the channel plan form from the straight one are
small enough to allow for linearization.
 After all the derivations ,we finally obtain the relationship
 giving the bend averaged O(ν2) correction to the longitudinal
dispersion coefficient associated with a regular sequence of
meanders:

Where,
 M = (2m + 1)π/2, functions of the longitudinal coordinate s:
 bm are constant coefficients
 COMPARISON WITH TRACER FIELD
DATA
 In order to test the validity of the proposed theory, we need information on
following:
Dispersion
coefficient

C/S Velocity Hydrodynamic

Distribution Properties

Plan form
Geometry of
shape of
C/S
channel
 COMPARISON WITH TRACER FIELD
DATA
 This dataset therefore provides all the information needed to assess the
robustness of the present modeling framework.
 In each test a radiotracer (gold-198) was injected in a line source across the
stream.
 About 15 ml of the tracer, a highly concentrated solution of gold chloride in
nitric and hydrochloric acid, was diluted to a volume of 2 l.
 The injection was made at a uniform rate over a 1-min period.
 The concentration of radionuclide used in each test was proportional to the
discharge (about 2.6 GBq m−3 s−1).
 The concentrations near to the stream centerline were observed by a
scintillation detector. The resolving time for the entire system was found to
be 50 s.
 The error due to the resolving time was about 5–10%.
 TRACER DATA
 Five river reaches considered by Godfrey and Frederick (1970),
 Three straight plan forms (the Copper Creek below gage (near Gate City,Va),
the Clinch River above gage(hereafter Clinch River a.g., near Clinchport,Va), and the Clinch
River below gage (hereafter Clinch River b.g., near Speers Ferry, Va).
 The other two river reaches meandering plan forms (the Powell River
near Sedville (Tenn) and the Copper Creek above gage (near Gate City,Va)
 This data set has been integrated with the estimates of K* obtained from
tracer tests carried out, in other five straight streams and eight meandering
rivers,(namely the Queich, Sulzbach and Kaltenbach rivers (Noss and Lorke, 2016), the Ohio,
Muskegon, St. Clair and Red Cedar rivers (Shen et al., 2010), the Green-Duwamish Rive(Fischer,
1968), the Missouri River (Yotsukura et al., 1970), the Lesser Slave River (Beltaos and Day, 1978),
and the Miljacka River (Dobran, 1982).
 TRACER DATA
 Comparing tracer data to theoretical modeling carried , Conclusion
came:
 Ensures a degree of accuracy greater than that attained when
neglecting curvature effects (< dr > =0.32 instead of < dr > =0.76).
 Although sometimes the theoretical coefficients turn out to be lower
than those observed in the field.
 On the basis of a linearized treatment of the flow field, which tends
to underestimate
 intensity of secondary circulations
 transverse bed deformations forced by the meandering stream.
 Clearly, a number of other processes act in the field to make
dispersion not entirely Fickian, contributing to the data scatter.
 TRACER DATA
 Comparison between the dispersion coefficients predicted theoretically and those
estimated from tracer test data (Godfrey and Frederick, 1970)
 The continuous line denotes the perfect agreement; the dotted lines correspond to
a ± 30 % error. b) and d): values of the discrepancy ratio associated with the data
plotted in figures a) and c). The continuous line denotes the perfect agreement; the
dashed lines correspond to a ± 50 % error.
 CONCLUSION
 Physics-based theoretical framework to estimate the longitudinal
dispersion coefficient on the basis of the hydro-morphodynamic modeling
of the flow field and the bed topography that establish in alluvial rivers.
 Rational perturbative framework has been developed on the basis of a
suitable scaling of the two-dimensional advection-diffusion equation.

Centrifugal
Secondary
Longitudinal circulation
Topographic
dispersion
effect
dynamics
Velocity Shear

Concentration
gradient
Helical Flow
Circulation
Velocity
gradient
 CONCLUSION
 The plan form shapes of meandering river
 Small values of the curvature ratio ν, (0.1-0.2)
 The longitudinal dispersion coefficient, averaged over the meander length
depends hydrodynamic and morphologic dimensionless parameters
 A sequence of relatively short bends leads to reduction of the longitudinal
dispersion coefficient
 The comparison with field data obtained from tracer tests are in
agreement with proposed approach (to determine averaged dispersion
coefficient)
 Flow nonlinearities, enhancing transverse mixing and shear flow dispersion.
 Predicted and estimated coefficients are associated with the not entirely
Fickian behavior of the dispersion process.
 Good /Bad
 Positive :
 These models, owing to their analytical character
 provide insight on the basic mechanisms operating in the process under
investigation,
 Also allow to develop relatively simple engineering tools which can be
profitably used for practical purposes.

 Negative :
 They still require a large computational effort to correctly include the
effects of secondary helical flow and the bed topography of movable bed
channels
 These methods prove to be very time consuming and expensive.
 So economy point of view this method is not considered as good method.
 They made so many assumptions to lineralize and to minimize the
complexity which eventually impact the accuracy of result.
NOTATIONS
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