Providing an Empirical Relationship for Estimating Velocity of Density Current Head over the Bed with Cylindrical Roughness

In deep reservoirs the turbidity currents are usually the reason of transport and deposition of sediment. If the turbidity current is completely stopped in the middle regions of the reservoir; sediment deposition reduces near the dam wall and as a result the main tasks of the dam are not disrupted. Roughening up the bed is a technique for changing the density current hydraulics or slowing of its velocity. Therefore in the present research the head velocity of the density current on the bed with cylindrical roughness is studied and a relationship for head velocity is presented. A series of gravity currents experiments are performed in a flume with 35 cm width, 70 cm height and 9 m length. The experiments are developed as salinity fluid flow with three salt concentrations of 10, 15 and 20 g/L in bed slopes renge of 0.5, 1.25 and 2% and three roughness height of 2.5, 4 and 5.5 cm. The result indicates that head velocity is almost constant during passage from smooth bed while it reduces significantly in rough bed. The bed slope and fluid concentration have direct relation with the head velocity. Roughening up the bed has reduced the gravity current head velocity. Also, increasing roughness height reduces the velocity of the current head to a certain extent. Finally, a relationship is developed to estimate the head velocity.