Development and application of a braided river model with non-uniform sediment transport

• A morphological model is developed to study braided rivers dominated by bed load.
• A fractional approach is used to represent the transport of non-uniform sediment.
• Typical evolution patterns observed in an experimental braided river are reproduced.
• Sediment size distribution has a significant effect on channel width-to-depth ratio.
• Coarsening near banks and bars reduces erosion and affects channel development.

This paper presents the development and application of a physics-based morphological model for simulating the evolution processes of braided channels. This model comprises a depth-integrated hydrodynamic sub-model for rapidly varying unsteady flows and a bed load sediment transport sub-model for non-uniform sediments. The sheltering effects of non-uniform particles and the lateral sediment transport due to bed slope and secondary flow are taken into account in the sediment sub-model. Channel bed level change is calculated according to the erosion/deposition rate, and the bank movement is modelled according to the submerged angle of repose, which is valid for braided rivers in natural and experimental conditions. The model has been applied to a braided river produced in a flume experiment, and the numerical model-predicted channel patterns are shown to generally well resemble the experimental river. Most of the morphodynamic processes observed in the experiment can be found in the numerical predictions, including the evolution of the channel from a single straight channel to a multi-thread pattern and local morphologic changes. The mechanisms of the morphodynamic evolution of multi-thread flows are investigated, in which the process of grain sorting occurs under the interaction of fluid and sand, and the effect on channel migration is identified.

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