In meandering rivers, interactions between flow, sediment transport, and bed
topography affect diverse processes, including bedform development and channel
migration. Predicting how these interactions affect the spatial patterns and
magnitudes of bed deformation in meandering rivers is essential for various
river engineering and geoscience problems. Computational fluid dynamics
simulations can predict river morphodynamics at fine temporal and spatial
scales but have traditionally been challenged by the large scale of natural
rivers. We conducted coupled large-eddy simulation (LES) and bed morphodynamics
simulations to create a unique database of hydro-morphodynamic datasets for 42
meandering rivers with a variety of planform shapes and large-scale geometrical
features that mimic natural meanders. For each simulated river, the database
includes (i) bed morphology, (ii) three-dimensional mean velocity field, and
(iii) bed shear stress distribution under bankfull flow conditions. The
calculated morphodynamics results at dynamic equilibrium revealed the formation
of scour and deposition patterns near the outer and inner banks, respectively,
while the location of point bars and scour regions around the apexes of the
meander bends is found to vary as a function of the radius of curvature of the
bends to the width ratio. A new mechanism is proposed that explains this
seemingly paradoxical finding. The high-fidelity simulation results generated
in this work provide researchers and scientists with a rich numerical database
for morphodynamics and bed shear stress distributions in large-scale meandering
rivers to enable systematic investigation of the underlying phenomena and
support a range of river engineering applications