Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Probability Distribution of Turbulent Velocity Fluctuations in a Patchy Vegetated Open Channel

Abstract

Olatunji Peter Folorunso

The probability density function (PDF) for the stream wise velocity fluctuations was obtained for various cross sections in a patchy vegetated open channel. The pdf obtained for all the cross sections appeared to be qualitatively Gaussian, hence adequate to predict the extreme values arising from coherent structures of the patchy vegetated open channel for two experimental conditions. Relative to gravel bed, it is shown that the vegetation stem density produces asymmetric velocity fluctuations over the vegetated bed due to more distortion of large scale flow structures. At the boundary region however, the pdf is negatively skewed in experiment two relative to experiment one. This asymmetry is attributed to the enhanced lateral transport of momentum at the boundary region.