A sediment fluxes investigation for the 2-D modelling of large river morphodynamics

GUERRERO, MASSIMO; LATOSINSKI, FRANCISCO; NONES, MICHAEL; SZUPIANY, RICARDO N.; RE, MARIANO; MARIA GABRIELLA GAETA

ADVANCES IN WATER RESOURCES

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2015 vol. 81 p. 186 - 198

0309-1708

A complete understanding of alluvial-bed dynamics is desirable for evaluating a variety of issues related to water resources. Sediment fluxes were investigated in a bifurcation of the large Parana River near Rosario, Argentina. The backscatter estimations from the Doppler profilers provided the suspended load of the sediment forming the riverbed. An echo-sounder was applied to track the dunes yielding the bed-load estimation. Aiming to show the usefulness of the recorded data, a 2-D numerical code was applied to the 10-km long and 2-km wide Rosario reach. The morphodynamic module was un-coupled from the hydrodynamics assessment, which enabled the long-term prediction of the river morphology accounting for the hydrological yearly variation with a quasi-steady approach. Numerical experiments were performed to test the sensitivity of the hydrodynamic model to the computational time-step and mesh size, to test the un-coupling scheme performance regarding the full-dynamic modelling, to test the accuracy of the sediment transport formulae based on the field evidence and, finally, to provide guidance to properly fix the model parameters.