Stochastic Sediment Transport in Time Persistent Flow Events

This study is an embryonic research attempting to apply the stochastic diffusion particle tracking model (SD-PTM) with fractional Brownian motion (fBm) to sediment transport in open channel flows. The mathematical property of correlated increments in fBm makes it a potential method to model random particle trajectories under the impact of the long-time persistence events such as the larger flow events. Particles during such flow events have an increasing/decreasing statistical dependency on flow and can thus be modeled by SD-PTM with fBm. In the study, one-dimensional simulation is presented based on 10,000 random particle trajectories.

Keywords: fractional Brownian motion, stochastic diffusion particle tracking model, stochastic sediment transport