Bed-Load Transport. I: Mechanical Characteristics

This paper deals with the mechanical characteristics of saltation of bed-load transport in flowing water. Experiments have been carried out by means of high-speed photography and advanced data-processing techniques. Taking saltation as the mode of bed-load transport, systematic analysis has been made with regard to the forces acting on grains and the variation of their magnitudes along the saltation trajectories to obtain the kinematic and dynamic properties of these grains. Moveover, the relations between magnitudes of saltation parameters and flow intensity Θ are attained from the measured data. Some parameters in Bagnold's theory of bed-load transport are also discussed.