Incipient motion of riprap on steep slopes

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Riprap is commonly used as an erosion protection measure around the world. In some cases, for example when constructing bed arrestors, riprap has to be designed to be stable on steep slopes. The literature shows that the problem of incipient motion is reasonably well understood, but existing hydraulic design methods are found to be largely unreliable.The main objective of this study is to improve the understanding of the different factors affecting incipient motion in order to furnish the prospective design engineer with a reliable method for sizing riprap on steep slopes adequately.Eight existing theories dealing with the threshold of incipient motion are reviewed, of which Liu's work (1957) seems most promising. Naturally, the required median rock diameter of the riprap is reasonably large (due to the steep slopes), with high particle Reynolds numbers. However, little data is available for these flow conditions.Data collected from 12 large scale laboratory tests carried out for this research indicate that the dimensionless Movability Number is in fact constant for large particle Reynolds numbers. For design purposes, the recommended Movability Number which emerged from this study is 0.18, provided that the steep bed slope is taken into account, and that the theoretical settling velocity is calculated using an accurate drag coefficient and the d90 sieve size.A comparison of the laboratory data with design equations showed that a large variety of results are obtained, which supports the need for this study.Finally, it was shown that a calibrated one dimensional hydrodynamic model can be used by the practicing engineer to extract the hydraulic properties needed for applying Liu's theory. It was found that the ratio ks/d90 = 0.81 may be applied to estimate the bed roughness for the grading used in this study.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University