Transp Porous Med (2010) 85:867–884

DOI 10.1007/s11242-010-9596-6

Experimental Study of Sediment Flow Discharge in New

System of Bottom Intakes with Porous Media

Benyamin Naghavi · Mahmoud F. Maghrebi

Received: 10 March 2009 / Accepted: 14 May 2010 / Published online: 5 June 2010
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract Bottom rack intake is one of the most popular structures for diverting water in
steep rivers. The problems of corrosion, deformity, and clogging of the bottom racks in long
term inspire a new system of bottom intake in which a filled trench of porous media replaces
the bottom racks. Diversion of a specified amount of water through the porous media, when
the void space in the granular material is filled with fine sediments in comparison to the
bottom racks, requires much larger structure. For the proposed water intake, lower cost of
construction and maintenance and higher compatibility with the river morphology are con-
sidered as major advantages. This research deals with an experimental model with two-story
channel, the lower one is used to convey diverted water through the porous media and the
upper one is used to carry the remained flow to downstream. Measurements of the diverted
discharge were performed for different rates of flow, grain, and sediment size distributions
as well as surface slopes of intake. Results show that despite clogging of the suspended
sediments in porous media, using appropriate grain size with a surface slope of the porous
media increases the discharge coefficient of system. In comparison to the clear water flow,
the diverted discharge reduction induced by clogging is not significant and the efficiency
of system in long term with no operation effort is confirmed. An empirical formulation has
been proposed based on the concept of Darcy’s law for surface infiltration. The equation is
found to be dependent on size ratio, Reynolds number, and hydraulic gradient. The theoretical
predictions in comparison with the experimental results have shown a good consistency.

Keywords Bottom intake · Porous media · Clogging and sediment transport · Diverted
discharge · Infiltration resistance

B. Naghavi (B)
Department of Water Engineering, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
e-mail: ben_na80@yahoo.com

M. F. Maghrebi
Faculty of Engineering, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
e-mail: maghrebi@ferdowsi.um.ac.ir

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868 B. Naghavi, M. F. Maghrebi

Abbreviation
A Surface area of porous media intake (m2 );
Af Infiltration surface (m2 );
C Concentration of suspended load (by weight) (kg/m3 );
Cd Discharge coefficient (dimensionless);
CuB Coefficient of uniformity of materials (dimensionless);
Dm Mean grain size of porous media (m);
Dx Grain sizes of porous media at x% passing (m) (x = 10, 15, 50, 85);
dx Grain sizes of sediments at x% passing (m) (x = 10, 15, 50, 85);
Fr Froude number (dimensionless);
g Gravitational acceleration (m/s2 );
H Water depth in upstream channel (m);
I Ratio of concentration of sediment water to clear water(dimensionless);
i Hydraulic gradient (dimensionless);
j Ratio of water depth in upstream channel to length of box (dimensionless);
k Permeability of specimen (m/s);
k0 Maximum hydraulic conductivity (m/s);
ka Average initial permeability of specimen (m/s);
ks Hydraulic conductivity of porous media in sediment flow (m/s);
k(t) Hydraulic conductivity of bed material after time t (m/s);
k(σs ) variation of hydraulic conductivity with the sediment deposit (m/s);
L Seepage length (m);
Lp Horizontal length of intake (m);
ms Mass of deposited fines per area (kg/m2 );
n Porosity of specimen (dimensionless);
nf Final porosity (dimensionless);
Qc Ideal discharge (m3 /s);
Qd Diverted discharge of porous media intake in clear water (m3 /s);
Q ds Diverted discharges of porous media intake in sediment flow (m3 /s);
Qr Real discharge (m3 /s);
Qt Inflow discharge (m3 /s);
R15 Grain size ratio of porous media material to sediment material at 15% passing
(dimensionless);
R50 Grain size ratio of porous media material to sediment material at 50% passing
(dimensionless);
Re Reynolds number (dimensionless);
Rc Hydraulic resistance coefficient (s/m2 );
RQ Relative diverted discharge (dimensionless);
Rs Grain size ratio which defined as ratio of D15 of porous media material to d85 of
sediment material (dimensionless);
r Specific infiltration resistance (m/kg);
r Specific hydraulic resistance induced by rapid siltation (s/m2 );
Sp Surface slope of porous media intake (dimensionless);
Sf Friction slope (dimensionless);
s Specific gravity of the sediment (s = 2.65)(dimensionless);
t Time (s);
V Seepage velocity (m/s);
W Width of intake (m);

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Experimental Study of Sediment Flow Discharge 869

WcL Clogged material at each layer of porous media intake (g);

WcT Total weight of the clogging material retained within the specimen (g);
y Distance measured from the bottom of specimen in vertical direction (m);
α Empirical constant (dimensionless);
β Hydraulic resistance of unsilted river bed (m−1 );
γ Slope of the bottom intake (dimensionless);
h Head loss(m);
PG Pressure difference (N/m2 );
η Additional infiltration resistance induced by the deposited fine (m−1 );
 Dimensionless shear stress (Shields factor);
μ Dynamic viscosity (kg/ms);
v Kinematic viscosity of water (m2 /s);
ρc Density of the clogging material (gr/cm3 );
σ Specific deposit (dimensionless);
σs Stable-stage specific deposit (dimensionless);
σf Final value of specific deposit (dimensionless);
φ Hydraulic conductivity reduction in a clogged porous media (m−2 );
ψ Relative diverted discharge in sediment flow (dimensionless);
ψ0 Relative diverted discharge in clear water flow (dimensionless);
∀A Integrated seepage rate (seepage volume) (m3 );
∀c Clogging material retained within the specimen occupies the volume (m3 );
∀t Bulk volume of base specimen (m3 ).

1 Introduction

Different kinds of water intakes can be designed to divert water from a river. Trash rack is
one of those, which is often adopted in relatively small mountain rivers, where steep slopes,
irregular bed configuration, instant transport, and rapid floods prevent the use of gated dams
(Bouvard 1992). Bottom racks are also used in the construction of debris-flow breakers
(Mizuyama and Mizuno 1994). In some cases of prismatic channels upgrading downstream
with a perforated bottom is used as an energy dissipater. Generally, diversion structures are
designed to divert maximum discharge of water. Moreover, in critical condition where the
entire bed loads pass over the stream bed intake, the longitudinal bars are used for bottom
intakes to reduce the clogging effects (Righetti and Lanzoni 2008). Corrosion of the bars,
clogging, and maintenance are the common problems of bottom racks, which make them
unusable in long term.
To solve these problems, a new system of bottom intake with porous media is introduced.
It is obvious that diversion of a specified amount of discharge through the porous media,
when the void space in the granular material is filled with fine sediment in comparison to the
bottom racks, requires much larger structure. It is believed that this kind of water intake does
not have any inconsistency with the river morphology because the granular materials, which
are used in the intake, are similar to bed materials.
Hydraulic conductivity reduction due to siltation of the porous media basically depends
on dimensionless shear stress, concentration of suspended load, hydraulic gradient between
river and groundwater, and grain size distribution of the river bed material (Schälchli 1995).
In storing particles in the bulk of filter media, the more angular the media, the wider the
range of particle sizes that could be strained in the bulk of the filter (Barton and Buchberger
2007). Straining at the surface of the media reduces the available cross-sectional area in a

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870 B. Naghavi, M. F. Maghrebi

single plane. On the contrary, interstitial straining occurs at many different horizontal planes,
allowing fluid to be redirected through adjacent unobstructed pore spaces. It results in less
head loss per particle captured (Sakthivadivel 1969). A filter which maximizes interstitial
straining will retain more particles with less head loss.
For a given porous media, physical variables such as flow conditions, suspended load,
grain size distribution and shape of the suspended particles, hydraulic gradient of the flow
and its direction can have a dominant influence on the clogging process (Schälchli 1992;
Carling 1984). A clogged permeable porous media will suffer a reduction in its drainage and
storage capacity because surface runoff will have difficulty infiltrating into the permeable or
reservoir base layer (Tan et al. 2003; Blazejeski and Sadzide 1997; Field et al. 1982).
In natural rivers, a continuous leak of flow into ground is taking place. There are some
similarities between the flow diversion by an intake with porous media and leak into ground
from the river beds. Actually, by replacing a slice of a natural river bed section with lim-
ited width and thickness by porous granular material, the problem of hydraulic conductivity
reduction due to sediment deposition arises. Although discharge reduction of intake due to
clogging of porous media is considered as a major limitation for the new system, by selecting
the most appropriate grain size, the problem can be mitigated. To maintain the hydraulic
conductivity as large as possible, filters can be used. The size of filter granular material is
usually limited to the size of material in the porous media and river sediments. Therefore, it is
believed that all of the research works involved sediment deposition in river beds and filters
are potentially related to the investigation of the hydraulic conductivity of the porous media.
This article reports on the investigation of sediment capture and diversion discharge of
a porous media as a bottom intake. The granular material used in the new system of water
intake can be found easily in the field. Recognition of the effective parameters on applica-
bility of porous media intake and providing conditions to improve the efficiency of diverted
discharge of this system are the main aims of this research.

2 Background

The process of siltation of a river bed can be described by the variation of the hydraulic
conductivity k(t) with time as (Schälchli 1995):

gL gL gL
k(t) = =   =  (1)
v(r m s + β) v r C∀
Af + β v β 2 + 2gh
A
v rCt

where k(t) is the hydraulic conductivity of bed material after time t, g is the gravitational
acceleration, L is the seepage length, ν is the kinematic viscosity of water, r is the specific
infiltration resistance, m s is the mass of deposited fines per area, β is the hydraulic resis-
tance of unsilted river bed, C is the concentration of suspended load (by weight), ∀A is the
integrated seepage rate (seepage volume), Af is the infiltration surface, and h is the head
loss in the porous media. The variation of k(t) shows the characteristic behavior of siltation
in gravel rivers with range of validity 1.5 < k(t)( mm/s) < 85.
An experimental study of Wu and Huang (2000) on hydraulic resistance of sediment in
porous media presents a formula describing the variation of hydraulic conductivity with the
sediment deposit:

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Experimental Study of Sediment Flow Discharge 871

gL
k(σs ) =  (2)
v β 2 + 2gh 
v r σs

where r  is the specific hydraulic resistance induced by rapid siltation and σs is the stable-stage
specific deposit.
A review of previous studies (e.g., Behnke 1969; Sakthivadivel and Einstein 1970;
Cunningham et al. 1987) suggests that three major factors namely the grain sizes of sed-
iment and gravel, sediment concentration, and seepage flow velocity govern the siltation of
porous media. The gravel/sediment sizes can be represented by a single parameter, i.e., the
grain size ratio Rs is defined as (Sowers and Sowers 1970; Sherard et al. 1984):

D15
Rs = (3)
d85

where D15 is size of porous media material at 15% passing and d85 is size of sediment
material at 85% passing.
The size ratio Rs is the dominating factor for the distribution of sediment deposit and is
known as an important factor in clogging and hydraulic resistance of porous media (Wu and
Huang 2000; Tan et al. 2003; Lone et al. 2005). It is reported by Sakthivadivel and Einstein
(1970) that less than 1% of the total pore volume is occupied by the sediment deposit, when
Rs is larger than 15.
The deterioration in the hydraulic conductivity of a gravel filter with sediment deposit can
be described as follows (Tan et al. 2003):

(1 − n)2 (n − ασ )3
k = ka 0 < k( mm/s) < 110 (4)
n 3
[1 − (n − ασ )]2

where k is the permeability of specimen (m/s), ka is the average initial permeability of spec-
imen (m/s), n is the porosity of specimen, α is the empirical constant, which is a function of
variables Rs and coefficient of uniformity of materials, CuB of specimen, and σ is the specific
deposit of the clogging material which is given by Eq. (5):

∀c
σ = (5)
∀t

where ∀c is the clogging material retained within the specimen occupies the volume and ∀t
is bulk volume of base specimen (m3 ).
Sakthivadivel and Einstein (1970) have reported that suspended sediment particles with
diameters equal to or greater than half the average pore diameter of the soil matrix will be
deposited and the matrix will be totally clogged by passing time. Suspended sediment par-
ticles with diameters less than half the average pore diameter are settled down in stagnant
pores or strained by flow constrictions or impinges and stick to other particles as a result of
inter-particle adhesion forces.
The main objective of this article is to simulate the flow of a bottom intake with a filled
trench of porous media in an experimental model under different hydraulic conditions of pure
water and sediment flows. During the experiments in this article, the hydraulic conductivity
of the porous media is investigated. The experiments involve a number of variables namely
discharge, surface slope of the bottom intake, type of granular material, and sediments.

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3 Experimental Setup

The experimental setup used for simulating the flow diversion through porous media is shown
in Fig. 1. The setup consisted of a flume with 10 m in length, 0.3 m in width, and 0.5 m in
depth (Fig. 2) in which a galvanized rectangular box of 20 cm length, 30 cm width, and 10 cm
height was filled with coarse granular material. The box, which is shown in Fig. 1, was set
at a distance of 5.0 m from the upstream entrance of the flume.
At the immediate downstream of the box, the flume was consisted of a two-story channel.
The role of the lower channel was to convey the diverted discharge Q d , and the role of the
upper one was to carry the remained discharge Q r .
A rectangular weir was set at the end of the upper flume to measure Q r . The diverted and
remained discharges were collected in a tank located below the flume and pumped to the
stilling chamber which was located at the upstream of the inlet section. The total discharge
Q t was measured by an orifice meter located immediately downstream of the pump and
double-checked by a rectangular weir at the end of the stilling chamber. Then the diverted
flow was calculated based on the fact that the diverted and remained discharges were equal
to the total discharge.

Fig. 1 Sketch of water intake frame as trench of porous media with different heights

Fig. 2 a Longitudinal section of the experimental setup, and cross-section of the flume at b upstream of the
porous media and c downstream of the porous media

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Experimental Study of Sediment Flow Discharge 873

The upper face of the specimen influences the risk of sediment clogging. The maximum
surface slope is usually restricted to 20% as stated in the literature (e.g., Brunella et al. 2003;
Razaz and Maghrebi 2008).
In this study the slopes of 0, 10, and 20% were used for the upper surface slope of the
specimen (Fig. 1). To prevent any movement of the material to the downstream, the vertical
face of the box of granular material was covered with a number of horizontal bars and also
a miniature wire net was set over the upper face.
Based on maximum flow discharge and maximum duration of a run as well as the bed load
transition formula, sufficient volume of sediment was provided to investigate the clogging
effect and efficiency of water intake. Therefore, an area with dimensions of 3.5 m in length
and 0.3 m in width at the immediate upstream of the porous media was lowered 5.0 cm in
order to make a volume to be filled with sediment materials. At the upstream end of the
flume, a smooth flow provider was used to flush uniformly the sediment in to the flow. Sedi-
ments passed over the intake were directed to the upper channel and accumulated behind the
downstream weir and sediments of lower channel which strained through the porous media
collected by a collector at the downstream tank.
Longitudinal slope of the flume was set as 0.005 in all runs. In 30 min of each run, the
time variation of diverted discharge, flow depth of the upper and lower flumes (hydraulic
gradient), and mass of clogging material remained in porous media were measured.
Efficiency of the porous media intake was examined by three different types of grain
sizes (Table 1) and four different types of sediments as clogging materials (Table 2). Other
variables are namely three slopes of intake and four discharges of 6.2, 8.4, 10.8, and 13.4
lit/s. In this way totally 144 runs were carried out in the laboratory. At the end of each run,
the porous media section of the experimental setup was removed, and the clogged materials
within the specimen were carefully weighted, and finally a new pack of the specimen was
replaced back in the flume to be ready for the next run.

Table 1 Characteristic size of

Gravel type D15 (mm) D50 (mm) D85 (mm)
gravels
P1 7.8 8.6 9.8
P2 10.2 11.4 12.6
P3 13.4 14.6 15.8

Table 2 Characteristic size of

Sediment type d15 (mm) d50 (mm) d85 (mm)
sediments
S1 1.15 1.45 1.7
S2 1.4 2.1 2.5
S3 2.45 2.7 3.1
S4 1.31 1.85 3.0

Table 3 Grain size ratio, Rs

Sediment type Gravel type

P1 P2 P3

S1 4.64 6.04 8.07

S2 3.05 3.96 5.3
S3 2.50 3.25 4.34
S4 2.60 3.38 4.52

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874 B. Naghavi, M. F. Maghrebi

As shown in Table 3, totally 12 different grain size ratios Rs were examined in the exper-
imental works.

3.1 Experimental Results

Dimensional analysis has shown that in sediment flow, variables which affect the diverted
discharge of porous media Q ds are as follows:
 
Q ds = f Q t , Dx , dx , Rs , Sp , σ (6)
where Dx and dx are, respectively, grain sizes of porous media and sediments at x% passing
and Sp is the surface slope of porous media intake. All other notations have been defined
previously. To compare the diverted discharge of the sediment flow Q ds with the diverted
discharge of clear water Q d , the relative discharge R Q is defined in the following equation:
Q ds
RQ = (7)
Qd
A theoretical description of Eq. 7 is given in appendix I. The relative diverted discharge of
sediment flow can be defined by Eq. 8 as follows:
Q ds
ψ= × 100 (8)
Qt
Along the same line, for pure water flow we have:
Qd
ψ0 = × 100 (9)
Qt
For a given discharge, variations of ψ and ψ0 with different variables such as grain sizes,
sediment types, and surface slope of the porous media are shown in Fig. 3a–c, respectively.
From these figures, it is obvious that discharge increment leads to the decrement of both ψ
and ψo . It is believed that the water conveyance through porous media is related to a power
of head loss, h. In other words, by increasing h, the amount of diverted discharge will
not increase linearly at constant values of ψ and ψo .
From Fig. 3a it is observed that for lower discharges, the conveyance of clear water is
much larger than the sediment flow especially for larger grain size. Moreover, higher relative
diverted discharges in pure water and sediment flows occur in coarser grain size. Comparison
between two flows shows that for grain size type P1, the ratio of ψ0 to ψ is about 1.7 and for
P2 and P3, the ratios decrease to 1.5 and 1.3, respectively.
In Fig. 3b for a given grain size, larger amounts of finer sediments are retained in porous
media and due to clogging intensity, ψ is considerably reduced. Finer sediments are more
clogged in porous media which intensively decrease the diversion. When sediments with
larger grain sizes are used, less clogging occurs; so the difference between ψ and ψ0
decreases.
Except sediment type S4, which is a mixture of three other types, for all types of grain
sizes and slopes, ψ is more affected by sediment types S3, S2, and S1, respectively. For
sediment type S4, which has the most natural distribution close to the river bed materials, a
value of ψ between 25 and 40% is expected.
From Fig. 3c, it is seen that by increasing the surface slope of the specimen, ψ decreases.
However, the increment in ψo is not significantly observable especially for two cases Sp = 0%
and 10%. It is found that the clogging materials are often retained on the top layer of porous
media and create an impermeable layer. Top layer clogging on the lower slopes of the porous

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Experimental Study of Sediment Flow Discharge 875

Fig. 3 Effect of different parameters on ψ and ψ0 variations in different discharges: a grain type, b sediment
type, and c porous media slope

media leads to penetration and deposition of the sediments into the lower layers of the
specimen accompanied with accumulation of the sediments in pores with time. Sediment
deposition takes place not only on the surface, but also inside the void volume of the coarse-
grained bottom intake. In porous media with larger surface slope, the impermeable top layer
is flushed by water flow and the top layer of media will not be clogged as much as a porous
media with lower slope.
In clear water, unlike sediment flow, the efficiency of bottom intake in water diversion
surface slopes of Sp = 20% is less than two other slopes. Moreover, the results of zero surface
slope of the intake, i.e., Sp = 0% shows better performance than Sp = 10%. These results
are in agreement with the observations of Righetti and Lanzoni (2008). They have stated that
as the surface slope of bottom intake increases, the entrance angle of streamline to intake
will decrease and thereby the vertical vector of entrance velocity in comparison to horizontal
vector will decrease. Owing to horizontal velocity vector increase, most of the flow passes
over the intake and a short percent of it will divert to the intake channel. Increasing the surface
slope of the porous media leads to the reduction of the deposited material on the surface of the
specimen. This phenomenon affects the conveyance of the specimen which is equivalent to
the increment of the discharge coefficient (Cd ) for larger surface slopes. Maximum discharge
reduction occurs at Sp = 0%. By increasing the slope, ψ will be increased. A general trend
of reduction in ψ and ψ0 by increasing the absolute total discharge can also be observed in
Fig. 3c.
In Fig. 4, the relative diverted discharge, R Q , is plotted versus the total discharge Q t for
sediment and clear water flows with different variables. Figure 4a shows that for coarser
grains, R Q is decreased. Moreover, by decreasing the grain size of the porous media, the
clogging intensity of porous media is decreased. In this situation, R Q is not significant and
especially for high flow rates, it is increased up to about 80% (Fig. 4a).
Figure 4b shows that the largest and smallest values of R Q occur for S3 and S1, respec-
tively, with diversion of 80 and 60% in comparison to the clear water flow. Since S3 is coarser
than S1, it is concluded that the clogging intensity of finer sediments is larger than coarser
ones. For sediment type S4, the diagram of the hydraulic conductivity lies between the ones
of S1 and S2 with 0.6 < R Q < 0.7.

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876 B. Naghavi, M. F. Maghrebi

Fig. 4 Effect of different parameters on the variation of R Q at different discharges: a grain type with Sp = 10%
and S4, b sediment type with Sp = 0% and P1, and c porous media slope with P2 and S2

Figure 4c shows that by increasing Sp , R Q is also increased. However, for each slope,
R Q does not show a significant variation as a function of discharge. As seen, in this figure
by increasing Q t , the diverted discharge of sediment flow, Q ds and clear water, Q d will
be remained more or less unchanged. In the porous media, as Sp is decreased, the amount
of sediment deposited and penetrated to the porous media will be increased. The obtained
results confirm this (Fig. 4c). Obviously, due to the clogging phenomena, R Q is expected to
be less than one.
A comparison of Figs. 3 and 4 shows that the tendencies are the same in Figs. 3b and 4b,
and in Figs. 3c and 4c, but not in Figs. 3a and 4a. From these figures it is observed that ψ is
an increasing function of the gravel size, whereas R Q is a decreasing one. This is due to the
fact that increasing the gravel size has two contradictory effects in which in the absence of
sediment, the permeability of the porous filter is increased, and thus the proportion of pure
water diverted flow which is equivalent to the increase of the relative diverted discharges
of clear water, ψo = Q d /Q t . However, in the presence of sediment, it also increases the
clogging effect (decrease of R Q ). Since variation of ψ = ψo .R Q depends on two factors,
obviously the permeability is dominant.
Additionally, the diverted discharge in sediment flow and clear water shows that due to
significant effect of clogging in low discharges, as the inflow discharge increases, the dif-
ference between ψ and ψo is decreased. Small difference between the diverted discharge
for sediment flow and clear water in high flow rates led to increase of R Q . When inflow
discharge is increased, large amounts of sediments are flushed from the porous media and
thus the diverted discharge Q ds is increased with low clogging effect (Diplas 1994). Also as
the shear stress is increased, the particle deposition rates are significantly reduced due to the
effect of hydrodynamic lift or drag forces inhibiting the deposition and enhancing transport
rates of sediments to downstream (Ahfir et al. 2007). When the surface slope of the porous
media is larger than the slope of the upstream bed, flow separation can occur. Separation of
fine sediment from the surface makes them to fall at a distance downstream of the separation
point. Some of the grains may saltate, which is accompanied with a vertical component of
velocity. It is believed that the diversion efficiency of the porous media will be increased
due to separation. In Table 4 variation of R Q for different values of Sp and Rs is shown.
According to Table 4, the higher the slope of porous media, the larger is R Q . Moreover, R Q
is increased as the size ratio Rs is decreased. Maximum values of R Q are associated with the
minimum values of Rs in the range of 2.5 < Rs < 4.5.

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Experimental Study of Sediment Flow Discharge 877

Table 4 Range of R p R Q for

Surface slope, Sp Size ratio, Rs
different Sp and Rs
2.5–4.5 4.5–6 >6

0% 0.6–0.8 0.5–0.6 <0.5

10% 0.7–0.9 0.6–0.7 <0.6
20% 0.75–0.95 0.75–0.8 <0.75

4 Dimensional Analysis and Governing Equations

To recognize all the effective parameters in diverted discharge through porous media, a mul-
tivariable regression testing is carried out. All hydraulic and geometric variables which are
involved are defined in the following form:
 
f Rs , R15 , R50 , Sp , σ, n, i, j, Fr, Re, I,  = 0 (10)
where R15 and R50 are the size ratios which are defined as:
D15 D50
R15 = , R50 = (11)
d15 d50
In Eq. (11), D15 and D50 are grain sizes of porous media and d15 and d50 are grain sizes of
sediments at 15 and 50% passing, respectively, i is the hydraulic gradient, j is the ratio of
the water depth in upstream channel to the length of box (H/L), Fr is the Froude number,
Re is the Reynolds number, I (= C/ρc ) is the ratio of concentration of sediment flow, C is
the density of clogging material ρc , and  is the dimensionless shear stress (Shields factor)
which is defined as:
HSf
= (12)
(s − 1) Dm
where H is the water depth in upstream channel, Sf is the friction slope, s is the specific
gravity of the sediment (s = 2.65), and Dm is the mean grain size of porous media. Other
parameters in Eq. 10 have been defined previously.
The coefficient of discharge is the ratio of the actual to the ideal discharge. The actual
discharge is the measured discharge. It is affected by friction as flow passes through the
porous media. The ideal discharge would be the discharge achieved without friction. The
coefficient of discharge is intensively related to the volumetric flow rate of the fluid flow and
the cross-sectional area of the passage. It is also related to the gravitational constant and head
pressure. Ideal discharge is defined as:

Q c = A × n × 2gh (13)
where A is the surface area of porous media intake, which infiltrates water (Fig. 1) and h
is the water level difference in the upper channel at the immediate upstream of the porous
media and the intake channel in the lower channel. A is defined as:
Lp
A=W× (14)
cos γ
where W is the channel width, L p is the horizontal length of intake, and γ (= tan−1 Sp ) is the
angle between the intake and a horizontal direction (Fig. 1).
Effective discharge passing through a porous media depends on n and the clogging mate-
rials, which decrease the effective void space between the grains. In other words, the initial

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878 B. Naghavi, M. F. Maghrebi

Fig. 5 Distribution of the

clogged material in depth of
specimen

porosity will be changed by passing the sediment flow over the porous media. So, n will be
decreased gradually. At each instant it has an effective value, which is less than the initial
one. By using the effective porosity n f , the final equation for discharge calculation appears
as:
W × Lp 
Q r = Cd × × n f × 2gh (15)
cos γ
where Cd is the discharge coefficient of the porous media intake. As a sign of steady state
condition, when the diverted discharge by the porous media takes a constant value, it can be
concluded that the porosity of porous media has been reached final porosity n f . Accordingly,
at the end of each run, as the clogging material accumulates within the pores, final porosity
can be obtained by the following equation:
n f = n − σf (16)
where σf is the final value of specific deposit σ , for the whole specimen. In order to calculate
σf , at the steady state condition, the total weight of the clogging material retained within the
specimen WcT is used in the following equation:
WcT
σf = (17)
ρc g∀t
An interesting feature of the trapped sediments in the porous media is providing some infor-
mation regarding the distribution of sediment concentration at different horizontal layers of
the porous media. The experimental results have shown that most of the clogging materials
are located at the top layer. As going down toward the bottom of the specimen, the concen-
tration is decreased. Figure 5 shows a typical amount of clogging along the gravel filter depth
at each layer (WcL /WcT ) for P1, S1, Sp = 10%, and Q t = 6.2lit/s.
The quantities of the clogging material retained within the specimen WcT were measured
at four layers each with a thickness about 2.5 cm namely WcL .
Eq. (18) represents all the significant hydraulic and physical parameters engaged in Cd :
 
Cd = f Fr, Re, i, j, , σ, R50 , Sp (18)

The best nonlinear fit to the data with the coefficient of determination R 2 = 0.86 is found to
be:
Fr 1.092 0.968 Re0.572 σ 0.269
Cd = 4.4 × 10−4   (19)
0.284 S + j 0.074
i 3.157 R50 p

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Experimental Study of Sediment Flow Discharge 879

As seen in Eq. (19), the hydraulic gradient i and the upper face slope of the water intake
Sp are the most and the least effective parameters on the diverted discharge, respectively.
Statistical analysis shows that the maximum correlation occurs when “R50 ” is substituted
by “Rs ” or “R15 ”. Considering the simplicity of “R50 ” in comparison to “Rs ” and also the
uniformity of chosen granular material of porous media, it seems that using this simple
parameter can show the behavior of porous media effectively. In this study, the granular
materials are selected in such a way to produce a small value of CuB . When natural bed
materials are investigated, we usually encounter larger values of CuB . In this case, Rs can
play more significant role.
In Fig. 6, a correlation between the calculated and measured Cd -values is presented. All
of the discharge coefficients of the porous media lie in the range of 0.06 < Cd < 0.12. The
range of Cd in different conditions is introduced in Table 5.
Minimum and maximum values of Cd for different variations of slopes, gradation of
porous media and sediments are given in Table 5. As can be seen from this table, larger
values of Cd occur at larger slopes. However, a specific trend for the variations of Cd as a
function of the sizes of the base and sediment materials cannot be observed.

Fig. 6 Comparison between

calculated and measured Cd

Table 5 Range of Cd in different conditions

Cd Slopes Porous media Sediments

0% 10% 20% P1 P2 P3 S1 S2 S3 S4

Measured
Max 0.106 0.112 0.118 0.112 0.099 0.118 0.118 0.100 0.112 0.090
Min 0.064 0.066 0.066 0.062 0.066 0.064 0.064 0.069 0.088 0.066
Calculated
Max 0.110 0.115 0.113 0.115 0.103 0.113 0.113 0.101 0.115 0.096
Min 0.056 0.062 0.059 0.063 0.059 0.056 0.056 0.073 0.085 0.059

123
880 B. Naghavi, M. F. Maghrebi

5 Equation of Hydraulic Resistance

The hydraulic conductivity reduction in a clogged porous media in Eq. 1 is given by

(2gh/ν)r Ct in which the term r Ct represents the resistance induced by clogging mate-
rial. In this equation r is the specific infiltration resistance, which can be expressed by the
following relationship (Schälchli 1995):
1.2 × 1012 0.5
r= (20)
(D10 /Dm )3.5 Re1.5 i 0.67
where D10 is the grain size of porous media at 10% passing.
Wu and Huang (2000) claimed that for the gravel matrix receiving the instantaneously
released sediments, the term rCt in Eq. 1 can be replaced by r  σs in Eq. 2 and form the term
(2gh/ν)r  σs due to the nature of the fast depositional process and extend an empirical
equation as the following:
 
r  σs = exp 0.13X 3 − 2.26X 2 + 4.49X + 22.41
X = Rs−1.89 I 0.13 V −1.71 (21)
The term r  σs is a function of size ratio, Rs , dimensionless sediment concentration, I, and
seepage velocity, V.
Since the experimental setup, which is used herein, is different from the ones implemented
by Schälchli (1995) and Wu and Huang (2000), we would rather introduce a new hydraulic
resistant coefficient as Rc in the following form:
2gh
φ2 = Rc (22)
v
By using Eqs. 22, 1 and 2 can be rewritten in the following form:

Lg 2
β 2 + φ2 = (23)
ks v
where ks is the hydraulic conductivity of porous media in sediment flow. Inserting βs =
Lg/ks ν into Eq. 23 leads to the following equation:

φ = βs2 − β 2 (24)
By using Eq. 24 and experimental data, the hydraulic resistance of the bottom intake with
porous media is defined as:
Rc = f (R50 , i, Re) (25)
The best nonlinear fit to the data with the coefficient of determination R2 = 0.79 is found to
be:
1.991
R50
Rc = 5.7 × 107 (26)
Re0.68 i 4.038
Eq. 26 indicates that Reynolds number and hydraulic gradient are inversely related to the
hydraulic resistance, Rc . A higher temperature of water, which is associated with lower
viscosities, as well as larger values of hydraulic gradient, i are led to infiltration resistance
reduction which in turn lead to higher infiltration velocities. Observation of the experimental
results has revealed that by increasing the hydraulic gradients, which is associated with larger
flow rates, the diverted discharge of intake is increased proportionally. Thus increased R Q

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Experimental Study of Sediment Flow Discharge 881

Fig. 7 Comparison between the calculated and measured Rc

Table 6 Hydraulic resistance for different Rs

Size ratio, Rs

<4.5 4.5–6 6<

Infiltration resistance, Rc (s/m2 ) 4 × 106 –1 × 107 1 × 107 –3 × 107 3 × 107 –7 × 107

in large discharge is a consequence of both low clogging and high hydraulic gradient, which
leads to larger values of Rc . For larger R50 the porosity of porous media increases and more
sediment can be retained in it, which is corresponded with an increment in Rc .
In Fig. 7, a comparison of the calculated and measured Rc values is shown. The hol-
low circles show that the hydraulic resistance of porous media intake all lie in the range of
3 × 106 < Rc < 7 × 107 . Table 5 shows the range of Rc for different Rs .
According to Table 6 when the size ratio Rs is less than 4.5, the hydraulic resistance Rc
does not play a significant role and thus the diverted discharge is higher.
A comparison of Eq. 24 with Eqs. 20 and Eq. 21 indicates that the size ratio Rs and the
hydraulic gradient i are the most significant parameters affecting the hydraulic resistance of
bottom intake with porous media.

6 Conclusions

The bottom intake structures can be used to divert the flow of a steep mountainous river.
In this study an experimental model of a new system of bottom intake with a filled trench
of porous media is designed to simulate the hydraulic characteristics of the diverted flow.
A large number of experiments under different hydraulic conditions involved a number of
variables namely discharge, surface slope of the bottom intake, type of granular material, and

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882 B. Naghavi, M. F. Maghrebi

sediments as clogging material were carried out. The most important results can be listed as
follows:
1. The diverted discharge of the porous media intake in comparison to the bottom rack
intake is lower, so to divert a specific amount of water, a larger structure is required. In
spite of larger structure, lower cost of construction and maintenance and higher compat-
ibility with the river morphology in long term are considered as major advantages of the
new system of bottom intake.
2. The diverted discharge variation is affected by the sediment type of river bed and grain
size of the porous media. Whenever the porous media intake reaches a stable stage of
clogging, the diverted discharge asymptotically reaches its final value. The experimental
results have shown that at the final stage of clogging a rough amount of 65% reduction
in discharge in comparison with the pure water flow occurs.
3. Rs and Sp are the most important factors which are engaged in the efficiency of the water
intake. In fact, smaller values of Rs (Rs ≤ 4.5) and larger values of Sp (Sp ≥ 10%) lead
to maximum efficiency of the intake. In larger surface slopes, the chance of sediment
trapping into the porous media is decreased which is associated with an increase in the
diverted discharge.
4. According to the proposed equation of the discharge coefficient (Eq. 19), the hydraulic
gradient, i and the upper face slope of the water intake, Sp are the most and the least
effective parameters on the diverted discharge, respectively.

Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank the referees for their useful suggestions, which contributed
greatly to this article. This research was partially supported by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research of
Ministry of Energy, Khorasan Razavi Regional Water Authority, Iran, Grant number: KOR-86007, Project
leader: Dr. M. F. Maghrebi, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, and the project name is “New system of bottom
intake with porous media”.

Appendix I: Equation of Relative Discharge

Having applied the equation of surface infiltration, the flow condition through a clogging
porous media can be expressed as (Schälchli 1995):

d∀A Af PG
=   Re > 2000 (I.1)
dt μ r C∀
Af + β
A

where PG is the pressure difference inducing the infiltration, and μ is the dynamic viscos-
ity. Other parameters are defined in Eq. 1. Replacing PG by ρgh and integrating Eq. I.1
yields:
r C∀2A AF gh
+ β∀A = t (I.2)
2 Af v
where β is a function of maximum hydraulic conductivity k0 and defined as:
Lg
β= (I.3)
k0 v
According to Darcy’s law and by using infiltration area, discharge Q under a hydraulic gra-
dient can be defined as Q = k0 (h/L)Af . Substituting this equation into Eq. (I.3), we
have:

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Experimental Study of Sediment Flow Discharge 883

gh Af
β= (I.4)
vQ
where Q is the diverted discharge of porous media intake in clear water flow (Q d ). In Eq. I.2,
∀A is the seepage volume of the porous media when the clogging materials are retained in
it and thus ∀A /t would be the diverted discharge of the porous media when it is clogged.
Q s = ∀A /t can be defined as the diverted discharge of the porous media intake (Q ds ).
Using Eq. I.4 and substituting Q d and Q ds in Eq. I.2, the following equation is obtained:
r C∀A Qd
+β =β (I.5)
2 Af Q ds
According to Schälchli (1995), the term rC∀A /Af is shown by η. This term represents addi-
tional infiltration resistance induced by the fine deposited material with the mass of C∀A .
Substituting η in Eq. (I.5), gives the equation of relative discharge, R Q :
1 η
−1= 0.333 < R Q < 0.97 (I.6)
RQ 2β
According to experimental data, the range of β and η can be considered as: 0.15 × 108 <
β < 3 × 108 and 8.2 × 106 < η < 6.1 × 107 .

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