A LINEAR THEORY FOR DISTURBANCE OF COHERENT STRUCTURE AND MECHANISM OF SAND WAVES IN OPEN-CHANNEL FLOW

The formation of sand wave is such a process in which the roughness and discontinuity of the original bed surface cause the disturbance of the bottom laminar flow in an open channel, and the development of the disturbance in turn leads to instability of the flow and the appearance of the coherent structure. The evolution and development of the coherent structure further promote the undulations of bed surface and sand waves rise finally. The sand wave is explained as a result of action that the bed sediment particles are disturbed by the coherent structure. This study shows that the sand wave formation is the result of disturbance action of neutral coherent structure, and the sand wave shape obtained in computations is identical to the practical one.