Validation of a General-Purpose Erosion-Sedimentation Model on a Laboratory Experiment

This work aims at modeling transport and sedimentation of particles in a water flow. A new erosion-sedimentation model has been introduced in Nouhou-Bako et al. (J Hydrol X 12:100082, 2021) considering the concentrations of sediment suspended in the fluid or deposited on an exchange layer. Based on conservation laws, it is composed, for each class of particle, of a transport equation on the suspended material, coupled with the exchange between deposited particles and suspended material. A benefit provided by this approach is its ability to replicate other well-known erosion models and thus to model various sedimentation processes and materials. This new model has been implemented into the FullSWOF_1D (Full Shallow Water for Overland Flow in one Dimension) software (Delestre et al. in J Open Source Softw 2:448, 2017) originally designed to solve the Shallow Water equations. The modified software is now able to simulate various erosion situations and was tested against several test cases. In order to check the model even more, we felt important to be able to replicate a laboratory experiment. We chose the sedimentation experiment described in Nouhou-Bako et al. (J Hydrol X 12:100082, 2021) where the transport and deposition of particles by a water flow were studied. The deposited layer and the flux of material at the outlet were measured. Thanks to the physical parameters, and with a calibration limited to settling velocities, we were able to obtain results close to the laboratory measurements. We also propose some clues to improve the results and the model.