Hydraulic characteristics of open-channel flow with partially-placed double layer rigid vegetation

Vegetation in watercourses can influence different aspects of flow structure, subsequently affecting many processes of flow, such as pollutant transportation, sediment deposition and hydrophyte habitat distribution. Vegetation often occurs on one side of a channel, which requires understanding the effects of partial vegetation on the flow. Although many studies have been done on flows through uniform vegetation, this type of flow is unrealistic, as in natural floodplains, the vegetation in riparian zones is usually non-uniform. There is little study on the hydraulic characteristics of the flow with the co-existence of short and tall vegetation under either emergent or submerged conditions. In this paper, a novel experiment with rigid vegetation of two heights in one side of a channel was conducted to understand flow characteristics such as velocity profile, turbulence intensity, Reynolds stress, and discharge distribution. Experimental results revealed that the velocity is almost constant over the short vegetation height and increases sharply with the depth just above the short vegetation. Similarly, the Reynolds stress had little variation in the short vegetation layer, but started to increase rapidly from the top of the short vegetation to the water surface, which indicates the presence of strong mixing layer near the top of the short vegetation. Additionally, a strong shear layer existed between non-vegetated and vegetated zones, indicating the reduction effect of vegetation on the flow velocity. Furthermore, modifications are needed to properly calculate the hydraulic radius and Manning's coefficient for the flow with double-layered vegetation.