Study on the transport of suspended sediment in an open channel flow with permeable spur dikes

The transport of suspended sediment in rivers with spur dikes is an important issue for bank protection and environmental management. Laboratory experiments were performed to study the characteristics of the flow and the transport of suspended sediment in an open channel with permeable dikes. Firstly, the essentials of these characteristics were studied by comparing results of flume experiments on permeable and impermeable dikes. The influence of the aspect ratio (d/l) of the interval between dikes (d) to the length of dikes (l) on these characteristics was then investigated. In these experiments, the properties of horizontal eddies, turbulence structures, and suspended sediment concentrations were studied. The results show that the development of large-scale horizontal eddies requires some distance in a shear layer for permeable dikes, although they are periodically generated from the first dike in the case of impermeable dikes. The basic structures of horizontal eddies are independent of the aspect ratio in the equilibrium region for permeable dikes. The suspended sediment concentrations for cases of permeable dikes gradually decrease between the several upstream dikes and they approach a uniform distribution in the downstream region, although those in the case of the impermeable dikes are relatively uniform in the downstream direction.