Impact of Different Vegetation Zones on the Velocity and Discharge of Open-Channel Flow

Different types of vegetation widely exist in rivers and wetlands. The vegetation will affect the ecological environment and flow process, thus becoming increasingly significant in river engineering and aquatic environmental management. Previous research on vegetated flow is mainly to understand the flow structure of open channels with fully covered one-layer vegetation. However, vegetation often grows along a river bank and co-exists in different heights. The present paper presents experimental results about the flow characteristics of an open-channel with two sides covered by differently layered vegetation, focusing on the effect of vegetation on the velocity distribution and discharge. Two heights of dowels in 10 cm and 20 cm were used to simulate rigid vegetation and arranged in a linear form on both sides of a channel bed under emergent and fully submerged flow conditions. The velocity at different positions was obtained using ADV (Acoustic Doppler Velocimetry). Measured results demonstrate that there exists a shear layer between free-flow and vegetated zones, indicating that the flow transition occurs between fast-moving flow in the free zone and slowly obstructed flow in the vegetated zone and induces a high shear layer and transverse coherent vortices near the interface. Furthermore, compared with the emergent condition, the discharge through the free-flow region slightly decreases under full submerged conditions while the discharge in the vegetated region increases, indicating that the vegetation does not significantly change the discharge percentage in the free region. These findings on differently-layered vegetation would help riparian management practices to maintain healthy ecological and habitat zones.