Effect of seepage-induced nonhydrostatic pressure distribution on bed-load transport and bed morphodynamics

Bed-load transport is commonly evaluated in the condition of a hydrostatic pressure distribution of the flow field; while this condition is reasonable for quasi-steady, quasi-uniform rectilinear flows, it cannot be satisfied in a large variety of flow conditions, i.e., near an obstacle as in the case of a bridge pier. The dimensionless Shields number, which contains the assumption of a hydrostatic pressure distribution in its denominator, therefore cannot be strictly applied to evaluate bed-load transport in all the configurations where nonhydrostatic pressure distributions are observed. In the present work, a generalization of the Shields number is proposed for the case of nonhydrostatic pressure distribution produced by groundwater flow. Experiments showing the effects of vertical groundwater flow on the bed morphodynamics are presented. The comparison between the experimental observations and numerical results, obtained by means of a morphodynamic model which employs the new formulation of the Shields number, suggests that the proposed generalization of the Shields number is able to account the effect of the nonhydrostatic pressure distribution on the bed-load transport.