Eur. Phys. J. E (2014) 37: 40
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2014-14040-3

Regular Article

Saltation transport rate in unsteady wind variations

¹ Key Laboratory of Mechanics on Disaster and Environment in Western China, Lanzhou University, 730000, Gansu, China
² Department of Mechanics and Engineering Sciences, College of Civil Engineering and Mechanics, Lanzhou University, 730000, Gansu, China

^* e-mail: wping@lzu.edu.cn
^** e-mail: xjzheng@lzu.edu.cn

Received: 23 December 2013
Revised: 23 April 2014
Accepted: 25 April 2014
Published online: 26 May 2014

Abstract

Wind flow in the atmospheric boundary layer is usually turbulent. The gusty wind significantly influences the saltation transport which is treated as equilibrium saltation. This study performs one-dimension numerical simulations of unsteady sand saltation to discuss the effects of parameters of periodical wind variations on saltation response and sand transport rate prediction. The results show that unsteady transport rates are larger than steady rates of equivalent mean wind velocity. The ratio of unsteady/steady transport rates increases with the increase of amplitude and frequency. For the average wind velocities much larger than the threshold value, the errors of transport rates predicted by unsteady and steady model are about 10%, while for a wind velocity slightly larger than saltation threshold, the errors will be more than 200%. The sand transport rates are not zero even though the average wind velocity equals (is even smaller than) the threshold value, whereas Q must be zero in the steady model. Finally, an unsteady transport rate prediction formula is proposed which takes mean velocity, fluctuating intensity and period as independent variables.