Floc Property of Yeongsan Cohesive Bed Sediment with Respect to Salinity and Sediment Concentration

Abstract

To examine floc characteristics of cohesive bed sediment of the Yeongsan River estuary, a floc camera system has been developed and utilized to observe flocs under varying conditions. In order to validate the floc camera system, sand particles were passed through 88-125 and 63-88 µm sieves and observed within the laboratory. Mean grain size and settling velocities were found to be 102 and 56.2 µm and 6.7 and 5.9 mm/s, respectively. Artifacts of particles estimated outside of the sieve range are attributed to being imaged out of the depth of focus. However, as mean grain size and settling velocity of each size class were within the confidence interval, the floc camera system was confidently used to examine cohesive bed sediments of Yeongsan River estuary. The bed sediment sample was prepared with a concentration of 0.1 g/L in 0 psu deionized water. The mean grain size, settling velocity and fractal dimension of flocs were 40.6±0.66 µm, 14 mm/s, and 2.86, respectively. Experiments were also conducted using different salinities (10 and 34 psu) and sediment concentrations (0.1 and 0.3 g/L). Despite changing these parameters, the mean observed grain size and settling velocities were found to be the same within the error range of the system. The relatively higher values of settling velocity and fractal dimension are considered a result of the sediment containing relatively small concentrations of organic matter.