Hydrodynamic adjustment of mean flow and turbulence around a sinking boulder during local scouring

Abstract

The fact that on a live bed, boulders tend to sink during scouring is usually ignored, weakening the true understanding of hydrodynamics in boulder beds. In this paper, flume experiments were conducted to investigate the hydrodynamics around a boulder over a movable bed with a particle tracking velocimetry (PTV) system. By measuring the velocity field, the major flow characteristics, such as velocity distribution, turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) and bed shear stress, were analyzed. The results show that the sinking boulder apparently mediates the local flow structure and turbulence pattern. The near wake region is located in the range of 2D (D is the particle size of the boulder) downstream of the boulder. There is a near-bed countercurrent in the near wake region, the TKE increase sharply, and the velocity distribution deviates from the logarithmic distribution. Compared with the flat bed, the turbulent kinetic energy extreme point of the boulder riverbed in the near wake area deviate from the bed surface to the water depth at the top of the boulder, and the direction reversal and extreme point appear at the top of the boulder. The bed shear stress increases sharply in the near wake region of 1.5 ~ 2D.