Charting the slopes of sediment transport
Wednesday, January 29, 2014 - 09:00
in Earth & Climate
In the Earth Surface Dynamics Lab at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) the behavior of rivers is modeled through the use of artificial rivers—flumes—through which water can be pumped at varying rates over a variety of carefully graded sediments while drag force and acceleration are measured. The largest flume is a 12-meter tilting version that can model many river conditions; another flume models the languid process of a nearly flat river bed forming a delta as it reaches a pool. Additional flumes are constructed in the lab on an as-needed basis, as in a recent study testing sediment transport in very steep channels.