Calibration Report Annular Flume: At the Faculty of Coastal Engineering, Zhejiang University

Abstract

Estuarine systems worldwide contain large quantities of fine (cohesive) sediment. Fate and transport of these sediments is to a large extent governed by erosion and deposition processes. Knowledge on the behaviour of these sediments is required for modeling purposes in order to predict impacts on morphology and environment as a result of e.g. engineering purposes. Physical laboratory experiments are strong instruments to obtain this knowledge under confined conditions. Ongoing research regarding the behavior of sediment from the Yangtze River Estuary is carried out in the framework of the Sino-Dutch cooperation project “Effects of Human Activities on Eco-Morphological processes”. Within this project the State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research (SKLEC) in Shanghai and Delft University of Technology (DUT) share a collaboration partnership. Up to now, sedimentation experiments with Yangtze Estuary sediment are carried out at SKLEC in order to understand its settling and consolidation behavior (Te Slaa et al., 2012). Erosion behaviour is another key process of which its understanding is derides. SKLEC however, doesn’t (yet) have the facilities to perform erosion experiments. Therefore, collaboration was agreed with the Ocean and Hydraulic Engineering Faculty of the Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. This faculty has the availability of an annular flume, which is a powerful tool in determining erosion rates of cohesive sediment. The flume however, has not been in operation for several years and data and knowledge about the flume characteristics is lacking. Therefore a (re-)calibration of this flume is done of which this document describes the procedure and subsequent results. Calibration is carried out with state of the art knowledge on annular flumes, obtain at DUT (Booij, 1994).Hydraulic EngineeringCivil Engineering and Geoscience