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Does The Critical Shields Stress For Sediment Transport Depend On Channel-Bed Slope?, Ishraq Alfadhli, Shu-Qing Yang, Muttucumaru Sivakumar

Ishraq Hamdan Alfadhli

This paper investigates why the observed critical Shields stress for incipient sediment motion deviates from the Shields curve. This deviation is often described in the literature as due to measurement errors and non-uniformity of channel-bed slope or flows. On the contrary, this paper hypothesises the deviation as due to the presence of vertical velocity in open channel flows. We found that the existence of vertical velocity in non-uniform flows can lead to the deviation of critical shear stress from the standard Shield's diagram that is valid only in uniform flows, and the channel bed slope could not contribute to the …