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The Effect of Bed Roughness on Velocity Profile in Open Channels

A. MAHDAVI, PHD student, Department of Irrigation and Reclamation Engineering,
University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

M.H. OMID, Assistant Professor, Department of Irrigation and Reclamation Engineering,
University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran


ABSTRACT
The effect of bed roughness and bed load movement on flow velocity profile in an open
channel with uniform flat-bed is experimentally investigated. Experiments were performed in
a tilting channel of glass sides and smooth bed made of Perspex, and of rectangular cross-
section 250 mm wide and 12.5 m long. Two different grain sizes with diameter of 0.5 and
2.84mm were used for the roughening of the bed and sediment injection. Sediment injection
was performed with the same size of particles used for roughening the bed. Point velocities
were measured by a 10 mm propeller current meter. The results indicate that the logarithmic
law for velocity profile is valid for different bed conditions and bed load concentrations.
However, lower part of the profile is influenced by the bed roughness resulting steeper slope
of the profile in logarithmic region. Since the slope of this profile increases, shear stress and
consequently friction factor increases, affecting the bulk of flow to reduce the mean flow
velocity.

Keywords: Bed roughness, Velocity profile, Bed load, Shear stress.


1 Introduction

The velocity profile is closely related to
the friction factor and boundary roughness,
though the connection had received
relatively little attention until 1980.
Because the friction factor can be
estimated from the bulk measurements
without having to obtain the velocity
profile, earlier works until 1980 had
tended to consider the two separately, in
many cases ignoring the velocity profile
altogether since the friction factor is often
of more direct engineering interest. The
renewal of interest in the characterization
of velocity profiles due to work of Itakura
and Kishi (1980) and particularly Coleman
(1981, 1986) had led to further debate
concerning the friction factor.
In open-channel flow the velocity is
not uniformly distributed. In this research,
only vertical velocity profile is studied. In
case of gravel bed and turbulent flow the
vertical velocity profile is often assumed
to be logarithmically distributed (e.g.
Chow, 1959; French, 1986; Graf 1998 and
Ferro, 1999). Logarithmic velocity profile
can be shown by:

(1)

where u= velocity [m/s] in distance y[m]
from the bed; u
*
= the shear velocity [m/s];
! = Von Karman constant; and y
0
= the
integral constant.
The flow can be hydraulically either
smooth or rough. Hydraulically smooth
flow occurs when the surface irregularities
are so small that all roughness elements
are entirely submerged in the laminar sub
layer (Chow, 1959). Therefore, the bed
roughness will not affect the velocity
distribution. According to Graf (1998) and
Schlichting & Gersten (2000) the flow is
smooth if:

(2)

Where " = kinematic viscosity [m
2
/s]; and
k is the roughness height [mm].
#
#
% (
)
y
ln
u
u
$
&
&
'
*
0
y !
5 0
*
+ +
"
s
k u
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Substituting y
0
for smooth channel in
equation 1, one gets:


(3)

The flow is rough when bed roughness is
so large that it produces eddies close to the
bottom (Liu, 2001). There is no viscose
sub layer and the velocity distribution is
affected only by bed roughness. According
to Graf (1998) and Schlichting & Gersten
(2000) the flow is hydraulically rough if:

(4)

Substituting y
0
for rough channel in
equation 1, it follows:

(5)


In this equation the roughness element k
s
,
may be considered as the sum of the skin
roughness, and sediment transport
roughness (suspended load and the bed
load transport).
In studies of flow with suspended
sediment, two concerns often raised are the
effects of suspension on both velocity
distribution and flow resistance. Based on
the experimental results of Vanoni (1946),
Einstein and Chein (1955) and Elata and
Ippen (1961), as the sediment
concentration increases, the Von Karman
constant becomes progressively smaller
than that of the clear water value of 0.4.
However, this view is not universally
endorsed. Imamoto, et al. (1977) found
that ! increases with sediment
concentration in their experiments while
Fukuoka (1980) and Itakura and Kishi
(1980) suggested that the value of ! does
not change.
Coleman (1981) analyzed his own data
and reexamined the data from earlier
experiments to show that the change in !,
which was found in the earlier works, were
due to incorrect application of logarithmic
velocity distribution to the outer flow
region where the logarithmic law is really
not valid. By applying the logarithmic law
only to the region close to the bottom
boundary, Coleman found that the
presence of suspended sediment has no
effect on the value of !, The value of !
was found to conform to the law of the
wake which was introduced by Coles
(1956) for boundary layer flows. It appears
that Coleman (1981) has presented the
most convincing argument to date on the
effects of suspended sediments on the
velocity distribution in open channels. The
general velocity profile given by the
logarithmic law plus a wake function
seems to be valid for all of the flow depth
outside of viscose sub layer.
5 . 5 log 75 . 5 .
In compare to suspended load
transport, a few studies were found in the
literature regarding the effects of bed load
movement on flow resistance and velocity
distribution. The generally accepted view
is that bed load extracts momentum from
the flow which causes a reduction of flow
velocity and increase of apparent
roughness length (Ryckoczi 1967,
Kennedy 1969, Wang & Chien 1985,
Mclean 1992, Song et al. 1998, Begeron et
al. 1999). But some researchers believe
that bed load movement has no effect on
flow resistance (Einstein & Barbarosa
1952, Vanoni & Nomicos 1960, Yang &
Hirano 1995).
In this research, the effects of skin
roughness and bed load movement with
different concentrations on flow resistance
and velocity profile are experimentally
investigated.


2 Experimental SET UP and
procedure

Experiments were performed in a tilting
channel of glass sides and smooth bed
made of Perspex, and of rectangular cross-
section 250 mm wide and 14 m long. The
downstream end of the channel is provided
with a sediment trap with a collecting
basket and the weight of sediments
#
$ '
" u
%
&
(
)
*
*
y u u
70 /
u
*
"
s
k
5 . 8 log 5 . #
% (
)
y u
75 .
#
$
&
&
' * S
k u
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collected in the basket is continuously
measured by a digital weighing scale.
Downstream of the sediment trap is a
tailgate consisting of a set of horizontal
rotating flaps to provide various degrees of
opening for the water to flow through.
The tailgate is used to adjust the depth of
water in the channel without causing
undue backwater effects into the channel.
In each of the experiments clear water is
supplied at a steady rate from an overhead
constant head tank. For experiments with
the rough bed, a single layer of uniform
sand was glued onto the Perspex bed. The
same size of sand was injected to the flow
using a screw feeder system to produce
bed load at the beginning of the flume.
Two different grain sizes d=0.5mm and
d=2.84mm were used in the experiments.
Point flow velocities were measured by a
10 mm propeller current meter.
The experiments were carried out with
(i) clear water over smooth and rough
beds, and (ii) sediment laden flows over
smooth and rough beds. In the first series,
a number of preliminary experiments were
carried out to determine the friction factor
f, for smooth and rough rigid beds.
Various slopes of the channel and
velocities of flow were considered in these
experiments. This information was then
used to set the depth of flow before
injecting sediment at the upstream end in
the main experiments.
Prior to the experiments with
sediment-laden flow, for a given slope of
the channel and discharge of water, a
uniform flow without sediments was first
obtained by adjusting the tailgate to attain
a prescribed depth. Different
concentrations of sediments were then
injected into the flow at constant rate at the
upstream end of the flume. The rate of
sediment supply was kept constant by
adjusting the feeder and keeping the sand
level coinciding with the top level of the
container. Flow measurements were made
for various injection rates less than the rate
at which initiation of sediment deposition
on the bed was observed. Bed load
particles were collected in the sediment
trap provided at the downstream end of the
flume to be removed periodically. For each
injection rate I expressed in terms of mass
rate, the corresponding volumetric
concentration of sediment C is simply
s
I
C
QS
)
(6)
Where Q = the water discharge and S
s
=
the sediment density, is taken to be 2650
kg/m
3
. The experimental conditions are
summarized as follows:
sediment diameters used: 0.5 and 2.84 mm
sediment concentration: 0.0025-0.0075
water depth: 25 mm to 250 mm
mean velocity: 0.35 to 1.2 m/s
bed slopes used: 1:1000, 2.5:1000, 3:1000

For each sediment concentration, two or
three flow velocity profiles were measured
along the vertical centerline of the cross-
section of flow at a position located 8.0 m
downstream from the location where sand
particles were injected into the flow.
Starting from 10mm above the bed, which
was dictated by the size of the current
meter, velocities were measured at vertical
intervals of 5mm up to 20% of water depth
and then at 10mm intervals up to the water
surface. The measured velocity profiles
were then averaged to obtain the mean
velocity profile corresponding to a
particular sediment concentration. The
mean bulk velocity U of each averaged
profile was then obtained by integrating
the profile over the whole flow depth. The
shear velocity u
*
and the friction factor f
were then calculated from the averaged
velocity profile using the equations for
velocity profile in rough turbulent flow
and shear velocity.

3 Results

Figure 1 shows the velocity profiles in
normal and semi-log scales for clear water
condition. These profiles are presented to
show how the experimental results fit the
logarithmic law given by equation 2.

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0
4
8
12
16
50 60 70 80 90 100
u (cm/s)
y

(
c
m
)
y = 0.0799x + 0.6739
u
*
/k=S=0.0799
u
*
=0.0799*0.4=0.0032 m/s
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
-1 0 1 2 3
Ln (y)
u

(
c
m
/
s
)
Figure 1 Velocity profile related to clear water on smooth bed.


3.1 Effects of bed roughness on velocity
distribution

Two sets of velocity distributions related
to the same discharge and bed slope are
shown in figure 2a and 2b to show how
bed roughness changes the velocity
distributions.
Figure 2a shows velocity distributions for
discharge of 30 lit/s on smooth and rough
bed. It can be seen that with the same
slope, as the bed roughness increases, the
velocity decreases especially in lower part
of the velocity profile. In other word, the
amount of decrease in the lower part of the
profile is more than the upper part. The
velocities related to the bed roughness of
2.84mm are higher because the slope of
these experiments is more than the others.
The amount of this increase in the upper
part is more than the lower part. We can
also see these results in figure 2b that is
due to discharge of 40 lit/s.


Q=30
S=0.002 ,h=16 cm
S
2.84
=0.005 ,h=13.5 cm
Clear Wat er
0
4
8
12
16
20
40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110
u(cm/s)
y
(
c
m
)
Rough Bed,d=2.84
Smoot h Bed
Rough Bed,d=0.5
Q=40
S=0.002 ,h=20 cm
S
2.84
=0.004 ,h=18 cm
Clear Wat er
0
4
8
12
16
20
40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110
u(cm/s)
y
(
c
m
)Rough Bed,d=2.84
Smoot h Bed
Rough Bed, d=0.5










Figure 2 Velocity profiles on smooth and rough bed with different roughness.









Q=30
S
2.84
=0.005 ,h=13.5 cm
S=0.002 ,h=16 cm
Clear Wat er
a
=
1
7
.
0
9
a=7.51
a
=
1
0
.4
0
40
50
60
70
80
90
-0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5
ln(y)
u
(
c
m
/
s
)
Rough Bed,d=2.84
Smoot h Bed
Rough Bed,d=0.5
Q=40
S=0.002 ,h=20 cm
S
2.84
=0.004 ,h=18 cm
Clear Wat er
a=8.32
a
=
1
6
.
7
5
a
=
1
0
.7
7
40
50
60
70
80
90
-0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5
ln(y)
u
(
c
m
/
s
)
Smoot h Bed
Rough Bed,d=2.84
Rough Bed,d-0.5



Figure 3 Velocity distribution with semi-log scales for logarithmic part of profiles in figure 2.
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As it can be seen from the figures, changes
in discharge and bed slope affect the upper
part of flow region while when the bed
roughness is changed, the lower part is
more affected. This makes the logarithmic
part of velocity distribution steeper
resulting higher shear velocity. So we
expect more friction factor in rough beds.
This is shown in figure 3. This figure
shows the logarithmic part of velocity
profiles presented in figure 2 in a semi-
logarithmic scale (a is line slope).
As shown in figure 3, when the bed
roughness increases, a and u
*
are
increased. This increase together with a
reduction in mean velocity will increase
the friction factor f, according to equation
7.
2
*
8 #
$
%
&
'
(
)
U
u
f (7)
in which U= mean flow velocity.



3.2 Effects of bed load roughness in
velocity profile

Figure 4a and 4b show the effect of size
and concentration of injected sediments on
flow velocity distributions.
Figure 4a shows the velocity
distributions related to smooth bed (clear
water and rough bed with diameter of 0.5
and 2.84mm). It shows that the increase of
diameter and concentration causes a
reduction in flow velocity.
Figure 4b shows the velocity
distribution related to smooth bed (clear
water and sediment injection (d=0.5mm)
with two sediment concentration. It is clear
that sediment injection causes a reduction
in velocity especially in lower part of
velocity profile. It also shows that
increasing sediment concentration causes
more reduction of velocity in lower part of
velocity distribution profile.
The logarithmic parts of the velocity
profiles of Figure 4 are plotted in semi-
logarithmic scales in Figure 5 to show the
effect of sediment injection on the lower
part of the velocity profile. It shows that
sediment injection caused an increase in
slope of logarithmic part of velocity
distribution and shear velocity. Further,
this shows increase of concentration also
causes more increase in shear velocity.















Figure 4 Effect of sediment injection with different diameter and concentration on flow
velocity in smooth bed.
Q=40
S=0.002
h=20.5 cm
Smoot h Bed
0
4
8
12
16
20
50 60 70 80 90 100
u(cm/s)
y
(
c
m
)
Clear Wat er
d=0.5, c=0.008
d=2.84, c=0.0126
Q=40
S=0.002
h=20.5 cm
Smoot h Bed
d=0.5 mm
0
4
8
12
16
20
50 60 70 80 90 100
u(cm/s)
y
(
c
m
)
Clear Wat er
c=0.0026
c=0.008







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Q=40
S=0.002
h=20.5 cm
Smoot h Bed
a
=
8
.3
2
a
=
1
2
.
0
3
a
=
1
2
.
8
0
40
50
60
70
80
90
-0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2
ln(y)
u
(
c
m
/
s
)
Clear Wat er
d=0.5,C=0.008
d=2.84,C=0.0126
Q=40
S=0.002 ,d=0.5mm
h=20.5 cm
Smoot h Bed a=8
.3
2
a
=
1
1
.2
6
a
=
1
2
.8
8
40
50
60
70
80
90
-0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5
ln(y)
u
(
c
m
/
s
)
Clear Wat er
c=0.0026
c=0.008











Figure 5 Mean velocity against ln (y) for logarithmic part of velocity profiles in figure 4.


Figures 6 show the effect of different
concentrations on velocity distribution
related to rough bed. Figure 6a shows
velocity distributions related to rough beds
with d=0.5mm (clear water and two
different concentrations of sediment
injection with d=0.5mm). It can be seen
that, firstly, sediment injection causes a
reduction in velocity, especially in lower
part of profile. Secondly, increase of
concentration has increased this effect.
This is also shown in Figure 4b which is
due to sediment size d=2.84mm.
The velocity profile of Figure 6 is also
plotted in a semi-logarithmic scale in
Figure 7 to see the effect of sediment
injection with different concentrations on
shear velocity. It can be seen that the
sediment injection increase the shear
velocity.


Q=40.2
S=0.002
h=20 cm
Rough Bed
d=0.5
0
4
8
12
16
20
50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120
u(cm/s)
y
(
c
m
)
Clear wat er
C=0.0026
C=0.0037
Q=45.13
S=0.005
h=17.5 cm
Rough Bed
d=2.84
0
4
8
12
16
20
50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120
u(cm/s)
y
(
c
m
)
Clear Wat er
C=0.0026
C=0.0095











Figure 6 Effect of sediment injection with different concentration on flow velocity in smooth
bed.


Q=40.2
S=0.002
h=20 cm
Rough Bed
d=0.5
a
=
1
0
.
7
7
a
=
1
2
.
4
5
a
=
1
2
.
9
3
50
60
70
80
-0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5
ln(y)
u
(
c
m
/
s
)
Clear Wat er
c=0.0026
c=0.0037
Q=45.13
S=0.005
h=17.5 cm
Rough Bed
d=2.84
a
=
1
3
.
2
6
a
=
1
8
.
6
6
a
=
2
1
.
6
8
50
60
70
80
90
100
-0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2
ln(y)
u
(
c
m
/
s
)
Clear Water
c=0.0026
c=0.0095











Figure 7 Mean velocity against ln (y) for logarithmic part of velocity profiles in figure 6.
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4 Conclusion

The effect of bed roughness and bed load
movement on flow velocity profile in an
open channel is experimentally
investigated. Following are the
conclusions:
0 Experimental results of smooth and
rough bed fit the logarithmic law of
flow velocity distribution profile,
0 changes in discharge and bed slope
influence the upper part of velocity
profile,
0 increase in roughness elements (skin
roughness and bed load roughness)
affect the lower part of profile making
the logarithmic part of velocity profile
steeper. Since the slope of this profile
increases, shear stress and
consequently friction factor increases,
affecting the bulk of flow to reduce the
mean flow velocity


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