Suspended sediment concentration distribution using Tsallis entropy

•Tsallis entropy is employed for deriving the distribution of sediment concentration.•The entropy based sediment concentration distribution is close to that from random walk model.•The Tsallis entropy parameter is equivalent to nonlineary index of random walk model.

Assuming sediment movement in channel flow as steady, Tsallis entropy is employed for deriving the distribution of sediment concentration. This distribution is found to be analogous to the distribution obtained from a random walk model. The sediment concentration distribution parameters are obtained from physical considerations. With these parameters, the distribution is tested using experimental observations and its sensitivity is evaluated. The agreement between entropy-based distribution and laboratory observations is found to be close.