Experimental Investigation on Characteristics of Sand Waves with Fine Sand under Waves and Currents

Abstract

A series of physical experiments was conducted to study the geometry characteristics and evolution of sand waves under waves and currents. Large scale bedforms denoted as sand waves and small bedforms represented by ripples were both formed under the experimental hydrodynamic conditions. Combining the experimental data with those from previous research, the characteristics of waves and currents and measured sand waves were listed. Small amplitude wave theory and Cnoidal wave theory were used to calculate the wave characteristics depending on different Ursell numbers, respectively. The results show good agreement between the dimensionless characteristics of sand waves and the dimensionless wave characteristics with a smaller wave steepness. When the wave steepness is large, the results seem rather scattered which may be affected by the wave nonlinearity. Sand wave steepness hardly changed with bed shear stress. A simple linear relationship can be found between sand wave length and wave steepness. It is easy to evaluate the sand wave characteristics from the measured wave data.