River-bed armouring as a granular segregation phenomenon

Behrooz Ferdowsi, Carlos P. Ortiz, Morgane Houssais and Douglas J. Jerolmack ()
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Behrooz Ferdowsi: Princeton University
Carlos P. Ortiz: University of Pennsylvania
Morgane Houssais: Benjamin Levich Institute, The City College of New York
Douglas J. Jerolmack: University of Pennsylvania

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract River bed-load transport is a kind of dense granular flow, and such flows are known to segregate grains. While gravel-river beds typically have an “armoured” layer of coarse grains on the surface, which acts to protect finer particles underneath from erosion, the contribution of granular physics to river-bed armouring has not yet been investigated. Here we examine these connections in a laboratory river with bimodal sediment size, by tracking the motion of particles from the surface to deep inside the bed, and find that armour develops by two distinct mechanisms. Bed-load transport in the near-surface layer drives rapid, shear rate-dependent advective segregation. Creeping grains beneath the bed-load layer give rise to slow but persistent diffusion-dominated segregation. We verify these findings with a continuum phenomenological model and discrete element method simulations. Our experiments suggest that some river-bed armouring may be due to granular segregation from below—rather than fluid-driven sorting from above—while also providing new insights on the mechanics of segregation that are relevant to a wide range of granular flows.

Date: 2017
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01681-3

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