Equilibrium bed—concentration of nonuniform sediment

Knowledge of the equilibrium bed-concentration is vital to mathematical modeling of the river-bed deformation associated with suspended load but previous investigations only daelt with the reference concentra-tion of uniform sediment because of difficulties in observation of the bed-concentration.This work is a first at-tempe to develop a theoretical formula for the equilibrium bed-concentration of any fraction of nonumiform sedi-ment defined at the bed-surface.The formula is based on a stochastic-mechanistic model for the exchange of nonumiform sediment near the bed,and described as a function of incipient motion probability,non-ceasing probability,pick-up probability,and the ratio of the average single-step continuous motion time to static time.Comparison of bed-concentration calculated from the proposed formula with the measured data showed satisfac-tory agreement,indicating the present formula can be used for solving the differential equation governing the notion of suspended load.