A Lattice Boltzmann Model to Study Sedimentation Phenomena in Irrigation Canals

Abstract

Abstract. Fresh water is one of the most significant resources for human activities and survival, and irrigation is among the most important uses of water. The sustainibility and performance of irrigation canals can be greatly affected by sediment transport and deposition. In our previous works, we proposed a Lattice Boltzmann model for simulating a free surface flow in an irrigation canal, as an alternative to more traditional models mainly based on shallow water equations. Here we introduce the sedimentation phenomenon into our model by adding a new algorithm, based on the earlier work by B. Chopard, A. Dupuis and A. Masselot [9,11,12,27]. Transport, erosion, deposition and toppling of sediments are taken into account and enable the global sedimentation algorithm to simulate different transport modes such as bed load and suspended load. In the present work, we study both the behaviour of a sediment deposit located at an underflow submerged gate (depending on the gate opening and the flow discharge) and the influence of the presence of such a deposit on the flow. Both numerical and experimental validations have been performed. The experiments were realized on the micro-canal of the LCIS laboratory at Valence, France. The comparisons between simulations and experiments give good qualitative agreement.

Review of Suspended Sediment Transport Mathematical Modelling Studies

“…Recently, the non-local theory through the fractional advection-diffusion equation (fADE) has also been proven to represent suspension sediment concentration well [57]. In terms of numerical modelling, various lattice Boltzmann (LB) [58,59] and smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) models [60,61] have also been investigated for their representation toward flow with suspended and bed loads, and great success has been achieved in terms of accuracy in reproducing the experimental and field data.…”