Shear velocity criterion for incipient motion of sediment

Abstract

The prediction of incipient motion has had great importance to the theory of sediment transport. The most commonly used methods are based on the concept of critical shear stress and employ an approach similar, or identical, to the Shields diagram. An alternative method that uses the movability number, defined as the ratio of the shear velocity to the particle's settling velocity, was employed in this study. A large amount of experimental data were used to develop an empirical incipient motion criterion based on the movability number. It is shown that this approach can provide a simple and accurate method of computing the threshold condition for sediment motion.

Keywords

• incipient motion
• sediment transport
• Shields diagram
• critical shear stress
• critical shear velocity
• movability number