Review and Assessment of the Theories
of Stable Alluvial Channel Design¹

Vishal Deshpande and Bimlesh Kumar

Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati-781039, India

E-mail: d.vishal@iitg.ernet.in, bimk@iitg.ernet.in

Received September 27, 2011

Abstract—Deformable alluvial channels are known to adjust their geometry and slope to achieve stable con-
ditions for a specified influx of water and sediment. Designing the stable alluvial channel has been a captivating
topic for scientists and engineers around the globe for years. The work which was commenced by Kennedy in
1895 has been continued and various approaches have been given so far, some of which are quite interrelated
and others emerged with different ideas. In this comprehensive study, some of the classic and widely accepted
approaches published in the literature have been thoroughly reviewed and have been verified with available
river regime data. The data set has been sub divided into three categories based on the median bed material size
(sand, gravel and cobble or boulder), in order to examine the applicability of various methods available for the
design of stable alluvial channels. Detailed discussion related to the properties of the intercept coefficients in
power function theory is not available in published literature. In this study, the coefficients are first calibrated
and then applied with the respective exponents in order to derive the hydraulic geometry. Further, the derived
hydraulic geometry from various approaches is summarized and discussed with comparative view point. The
analysis shows that prediction from recently developed model based on the principle of maximum entropy and
minimum energy dissipation is better than other approaches for the entire range of data set. The same model
has been further generalized by assuming a wide trapezoidal channel cross-section through which an improve-
ment in the prediction has been observed.

Keywords: alluvial channels, analytical approaches, extremal hypotheses, hydraulic geometry, regime concept,
principle of maximum entropy and minimum energy dissipation rate

DOI: 10.1134/S0097807812040033

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