Flow through layered vegetation in open channel flows: effect on velocity and discharge distribution

Xiaonan Tang*, Prateek K. Singh, Yutong Guan, Ming Li

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

In natural river systems, layered vegetation like grass, shrubs, and tall bushes greatly affects the biodiversity, morphological process, and distribution of nutrients and pollutants. Previously, the effects of uniform one-layered vegetation on the flow structure and hydrodynamics have been extensively studied. However, due to the complexity of flow dynamics in the vegetated channel, multiple-layered vegetation has rarely been investigated. This paper presents a novel experiment to show the effect of three-layered vegetation on open channel flow. It contributes to our understanding of the impact of vegetation locations and heights on the velocity and discharge distributions for a mixed vegetated channel flow. Velocities at different positions along a half cross-section were measured using a mini propeller velocimetry. Observed results showed that the velocity has a distinct profile directly behind vegetation and behind the vegetation gap. The overall trend has two specific inflections about one quarter below (0.75 z/h) or near the top of short vegetation (h): the velocity remains nearly constant in the bottom layer (z/h 
Original languageEnglish
JournalEnvironmental Fluid Mechanics
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2023

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