On the numerical analysis of bed-load transport of saltating grains

The focus of this paper is on the analysis of the influence of particles' velocity distribution and their concentration on the sediment transport rate in bed-load from the Lagrangian perspective. Such aims are addressed by use of the relevant Lagrangian model of spherical saltating particles in which turbulence plays a significant role. The Monte Carlo approach is employed in the simulations to obtain the velocity and concentration of the saltating particles. Numerical simulations using two saltating particle models: (1) with; and (2) without particle-particle collisions are carried out. Based on the numerical results, we address the hypothesis that instead of averaged characteristics, the distributions of particles' velocity and sediment concentration should be taken into account in the calculation of sediment transport rate. Moreover, our results also show that the interaction between particles during their collisions is the key for better understanding of the physics of sediment transport. All results are compared with well-known experimental formulae i.e. Meyer-Peter and Muller and Fernandez Luque and van Beek.