Experimental Study on Bars Formation

CARRASCO MILLAN, A; VIONNET, CA; VALENTINE, E; BATHURST, J

Viena, Austria

Simposio; EGU General Assembly 2006; 2006

European Geosciences Union

Under suitable conditions, a uniform flow over a straight, flat and erodible channel bed loses stability and evolves into a flow-bed forms disturbances defined over an ample range of spatial scales. In particular, sand bars belong to one kind of a large scale bed form observed in rivers and in experimental flumes. The purpose of this work is to communicate some preliminary findings obtained after conducting a series of flumes experiments over a large sand box available in the Dept of Civil Engineering at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (UK). Those experiments have been guided by a suitable linear stability analysis of the governing equations, whose outcome frames the parameter range of the flow-sediment mixture used in the study.