Experiments on the short-term development of sine-generated meandering rivers

• Laboratory experiment on short-term development of sine-generated meandering river is discussed.
• Control variable includes channel sinuousness, channel width and dominant discharge.
• Environmental temperatures and humidities are recorded in the first time.
• Bank-lines, flow field, bed topography and sediment transport rate are analyzed.

This paper presents recent works on the simulation of short-term development of sine-generated meandering river in laboratory conditions. The influences of initial system parameters on the evolution process of rivers are investigated, including control over channel sinuousness, channel width and dominant discharge, eventually leading to different results of planforms. Measurements on the bank-line, flow field, bed topography and sediment transport rate were carried out. Braided rivers are easy to produce using non-cohesive sediments in floodplains, whereas environmental temperatures and humidities could influence the fluvial process by their effects on material cohesion. Channelized rivers were obtained in the “High Flow” conditions and the river corridor width was proven to be mainly connected with initial channel sinuousness and water discharge. Sickle-shaped and bamboo leaves-shaped sandbars were formed in the channels during the transformation process of meandering to braiding, the stability degree of sandbars reflects the adaption of channel morphology to hydrodynamic condition. Quantitative analysis confirms the formation of free steady bars, which manifests the free response as a downstream oscillation of the perturbation. Damping length is mainly affected by dominant discharge, channel width is the secondary factor, and channel sinuousness is the weakest factor. The wavelength of steady bars approximately equals to half of the initial streamwise wavelength. Sediment transport rate tends to increase with the increasing of channel sinuousness but stops growing due to the excessive increase of flow route and flow friction. The experiment results could be useful for verifying river pattern discriminant functions and offer a basis for further study on the morphological evolution of large-scale natural rivers, such as Yangtze River.