Erosion of fine sediments from a rough bed

Gravel beds in river systems represent important aquatic habitats, which may be endangered by the introduction of large amounts of fine sediments. In order to better understand the interaction between fine sediments and coarse immobile beds in sediment supply-limited systems, a series of flume experiments was conducted. The main goal was to determine under what conditions erosion stops. The experiments were performed over a bed of regularly arranged spheres. Plastic particles were taken as sediment and the erosion was investigated under uniform flow conditions for variable bed shear stress conditions just above critical conditions. The system was observed to behave in two different ways: with higher bed shear stress fine sediments were completely washed out, whilst with lower stress the sediment bed reached a stable level just above the equator of the spheres.