Evaluation of sediment barriers in relation to the trap of soil particles

Abstract

Water erosion and the subsequent sediment deposits can cause a number of environmental problems. The damage can be mitigated by means of sediment barriers. Their use is most often associated with the construction or protection of transport infrastructure. In some cases, they can also be used in forestry and agriculture. However, there is still a number of questions concerning sediment barriers regarding their proper function, efficiency and some implementation parameters. For these reasons, we decided to verify three types of sediment barriers. They were tested by simulated flooding at a flow of 5 and 10 L/s, always for a span of 25 min. All the tested barriers had a similar soil particle trap efficiency of about 90%. We assume that this result was due to some of our modifications to the sediment barriers and, above all, through the ensured run-off, where there were no structural failures within the barriers. Furthermore, it was also found, during the simulations, that the required sediment process of the eroded soil was not significantly affected by the size of the storage space. Therefore, it should be designed primarily with regard to the required amount of sediment and not to retain a significantly large volume of water.

Keywords

• full-scale testing
• silt-fence
• soil bund
• soil erosion
• straw bale
• trap efficiency