Evaluation of dispersion coefficients in meandering channels from transient tracer tests

Mixing characteristics of conservative pollutants were examined two-dimensionally in a laboratory meandering channel, and a method to compute the dispersion coefficients was developed based on the measured concentration data. To investigate how the hydrodynamics influences pollutant mixing in meandering channels, both flow and tracer experiments were conducted in an S-curved laboratory channel. A two-dimensional routing procedure was presented to evaluate the longitudinal dispersion coefficient as well as the transverse dispersion coefficient under the unsteady concentration condition. The results of the tracer experiments showed that the tracer cloud behaved quite differently depending on whether or not the tracer cloud was transported following the filament of maximum velocity. Also, separation and reemerging of the tracer cloud were promoted by secondary currents. The observed transverse dispersion coefficients obtained by the routing procedure were close to those obtained by existing moment methods. The transverse dispersion coefficient tended to increase with an increasing aspect ratio, whereas it is not sensitive to the injection location. However, the longitudinal dispersion coefficient was sensitive to the injection location as well as the aspect ratio.