Determining longitudinal dispersion coefficients for submerged vegetated flow

Prediction of the physical transport and mixing of pollutants or other soluble material is crucial for effective river management. Although well established methods exist which describe mixing processes in open channel flow, the presence of vegetation has a significant impact on mixing and few existing techniques account for this. To date, existing models which predict longitudinal dispersion coefficients in vegetated open channel flow have been derived and verified based on experiments conducted in simulated vegetation. This paper presents observations of longitudinal dispersion coefficients in a channel featuring living vegetation and tests against both an existing and a newly proposed model for longitudinal dispersion coefficient in submerged vegetated open channel flow. A model based on a mathematical technique of predicting dispersion in plain shear flow is shown to be capable of predicting longitudinal dispersion coefficients to within 20%