Sediment Transport under Saltation Regime in Turbulent Flow/ Part A: Development of the Model

In the present research, a 3D numerical model of the sediment grain movement has been developed based on the Eulerian-Lagrangian perspective. The forces which act on sediment grains are non-linear drag force, the shear lift force, the rotational lift (Magnus) force, the buoyancy force, the added mass force, the Basset history force and torque. Second-order nonlinear ordinary differential equations have been used to calculate linear and angular velocity vectors and also the position of sediment grains. Two parts including turbulent fluctuations in 3D space and a stochastic bed-particle collision model have been considered in the modeling procedure. The verification of the developed model has been examined for two important issues including the minimum number of jumps for statistical convergence and the appropriate value of the time step. The validation of the model has been performed using reliable experimental data in terms of the saltation height, length and streamwise particle velocity for the ranges of fine sand to coarse gravel. To evaluate the qualification of the conceptual model, the effects of the elimination of some forces and turbulent fluctuations, where do not exist consensus on the use of these factors in the previous researches, have been studied. The results indicated that the developed model can be considered as a numerical lab to study different aspects of the sediment transport in the prediction step, which will be performed in the part B of this series.