Acoustic velocity measurements for evaluating bed stability parameters

Assessing the stability of riverbeds is a major issue in many aspects of hydraulic and river engineering. Although the Shields diagram remains the most widely accepted approach, it faces a number of shortcomings. In particular, its ability to reflect the influence of turbulence on sediment motion becomes questionable when it is applied under strongly non-uniform flow conditions, which are of high practical relevance in hydraulic engineering. Therefore, new approaches were proposed, which relate the degree of damage of gravel beds to so-called bed stability parameters depending explicitly on the local intensity of flow turbulence. However, these new bed stability parameters are much more demanding in term of detailed description of the flow field and, in all studies so far, they were estimated based only on Laser Doppler Velocimetry or Particle Image Velocimetry. Here, we investigate for the first time the suitability of acoustic velocity measurement techniques to evaluate these bed stability parameters. The experiments focus on smooth-to-rough transitions and a quasi-uniform configuration is used as a reference. Flow velocities were obtained using two complementary devices: an Ultrasonic Velocity Profiler and a 3D Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter. The new experimental results show that relatively robust estimates of the new stability parameters can be obtained from the 3D acoustic measurements.