Comparisons of Sidewall Correction of Bed Shear Stress in Open-channel Flows

When investigating sediment transport in laboratory open-channel flows, it is often necessary to remove sidewall effects for computing effective bed shear stress. Previous sidewall correction methods include some assumptions that have not been completely verified, and therefore different values of the bed shear stress may be obtained, depending on the approach used in making sidewall corrections. This study provides a quantitative assessment of the existing correction procedures by comparing them to a new sidewall correction model proposed in this study. The latter was derived based on the shear stress function and equivalent roughness size for both rigid and mobile bed conditions obtained directly from experimental measurements. The comparisons show that the bed shear stress is generally overestimated by the Vanoni and Brooks (1957) correction approach but underestimated by the Einstein (1941) formula. In addition, low precision was obtained from the prediction by the Williams’ (1970) empirical equation. This study also demonstrates that the Vanoni and Brooks approach can be well approximated by a simple formula derived based on the Blasius resistance function. The sidewall effects, when removed in the different ways, would consequently affect the presentation of the bedload function. Experimental results of bedload transport, when plotted as the dimensionless transport rate against the dimensionless shear stress with the