Non-intrusive measurement of bedforms and bedload transport

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Bedforms play a prominent role in bedload transport due to their migration behaviour. For measuring bedload transport, conventional samplers are intrusive, costly, and laborious. This study examines the formation, growth, and migration of bedforms in a flume under varying discharge and sediment size. Bedform geometry was recorded using an ultrasonic ranging system, and migration velocity was obtained from image processing. Empirical Mode Decomposition was applied to the elevation data to separate primary and secondary bedforms and analyse their contribution to bedload transport. It was found that dune length and migration velocity are directly proportional to discharge and sediment size. New metric, crestline variability coefficient (CVC) was introduced to quantify bedform geometry. The CVC increases and decreases with an increase in discharge and sediment size, respectively. A power-law relationship is developed between the normalised dune migration velocity and Froude number. The non-intrusive approach adopted here enables accurate and high-resolution quantification of bedload dynamics.