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Bed-load transport : experimental observation and two-phase modeling
The erosion of granular beds under the action of fluid shearing flows is a problem
which has been continuously studied and discussed for over a century. This phenomenon
is indeed encountered in a wide range of processes of important relevance in nature
or industry such as sediment transport in rivers or oceans and slurry transport in the
mining and petroleum industry.
We focus on bed-load transport, i.e. transport consisting of particles that roll, slide, and bounce near the bed, and laminar flow is mainly considered. We discuss two fundamental aspects for this type of sediment transport : incipient motion of the bed and bed load transport by focusing on the determination of the particle flux. We favor a two-phase continuum modeling.
This work has been done in collaboration with P. Aussillous, J. Chauchat, M. Medale, M. Ouriemi, M. Paihla, Y. Peysson