Stream Power And Design Of Stable Sand Bed Channels

A simple and straightforward design procedure of plane and stable alluvial channel beds (at incipient condition) in noncohesive uniform material, under fairly uniform flow conditions is developed based on the experimental data. The design can be accomplished by making use of design curves and tables such that any two of the four design variables viz., water discharge, flow depth, channel slope and bed material size are sufficient to evaluate the remaining two variables. Thus the two equations, which are used to determine the remaining two variables, are: (1) An equation governing the Shields’ curve and (2) A relationship for stream power in terms of particle shear Reynolds number. These two equations are established by conducting experiments in the laboratory. With the help of such relations, the use of Manning’s equation (thus the ambiguity of estimating Manning’s ‘n’) is avoided while computing the average velocity in the channel. Design procedures to solve six possible problems are presented