Laboratory experiments on longitudinal dispersion in clear-water and sedimentladen flows are reported. These experiments indicate that the presence of suspended sediment does not have a significant effect on the dispersion process other than its possible effect on the friction factor. Analysis of the writers’ and other’s data collected in laboratory flumes and natural streams Shows that Taylor’s model of longitudinal dispersion based on one-dimensional Fickian diffusion equation with a constant dispersion coefficient, DL, is not suitable for describing the dispersion process in natural streams as DL tends to increase in the downstream direction. Therefore, a similarity analysis of the concentration distributions, on the lines of Day and Wood, has been carried out. Based on dimensional analysis an improved empirical method has been obtained for predicting the concentration-time relation without the use of
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