Gravity- and Turbulence-Dominated Sediment Motion in the Clear-Water Scour Process at a Vertical-Wall Abutment in Pressurized Flow

Results on the motion of sediment particles on the bottom of the erosion hole are shown for a clear-water scour experiment with a vertical-wall abutment. The paper presents an investigation of particle kinematics starting from the division of the grain instantaneous movements into two populations, namely the "turbulence-dominated" events (those in which the particle motion is triggered by the turbulent flow field) and the "gravity-dominated" events (those in which the particles slide along the slopes of the scour hole due to geotechnical instability). Attention is focused on the well developed stages of the erosion process. For such experimental times, the action of the principal vortex system is particularly evident because the latter is not much stretched along the direction of the mean flow deviation, thanks to the increased flowing area. At the same time, the temporal unsteadiness of the vortices lets a bimodal behaviour of the sediments to emerge. A relevant difference has been found between the dynamics of gravity-dominated and turbulence-dominated events. In addition, it was found that the presence of geotechnical effects in the erosion hole may significantly alter the scour rate. Potential implications of the present results for the modelling of local scour processes are described.