Onset of sediment transport in mono- and bidisperse beds under turbulent shear flow

Abstract

In this paper, we present a study on the onset of sediment motion of particles under turbulent shear flow. We use a fully resolved coupled lattice Boltzmann–discrete element solver to study the behavior of monodisperse and bidisperse beds of spheres. For monodisperse beds, we find that the onset of sediment motion is in agreement with the predictions with models from the literature. For bidisperse beds, segregation phenomena at a short timescale are found that lead to increased entrainment of larger particles. This shows that, in addition to long-term segregation phenomena such as riverbed armoring, segregation also occurs at much shorter timescales.