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ARS Home » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #104490
Title: EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF HEADCUT MIGRATION

Author
item WU, WEIMING - CCHE, OXFORD, MS
item WANG, SAM - CCHE, OXFORD, MS
item JIA, YAFEI - CCHE, OXFORD, MS
item Robinson, Kerry

Submitted to: American Society of Civil Engineers Water Resources Conference Proceedings
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/8/1999
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: The formation and movement of a gully headcut causes streambank stability problems, contributes large quantities of sediment to receiving streams, and can threaten the integrity of hydraulic structures such as dams and spillways. This research was conducted to improve our ability to predict how quickly a gully headcut can move. A simplified model was developed using the predicted hydraulic forces on the gully overfall and the parameters that describe the resisting soil mass. The model does a good job of representing two completely different data sets. This simplified model should be of interest to water resource managers and engineers responsible for the stability hydraulic structures.

Technical Abstract: The material-dependent parameters in De Ploey's (1989) and Temple's (1992) empirical models relating the time-averaged headcut migration rate to the energy or energy change at the free overfall are analyzed in order to achieve better predictions. A new empirical model relating the time- averaged erosion rate on the vertical surface of a headcut to the maximum shear stress on this vertical surface is proposed. The material-dependent parameters in these models are now related to the saturation degree, clay content, and bulk density of the soil. These models are verified by using Robinson and Hanson's (1995) and Bennett et al.'s (1997) experimental data of headcut migration, and regression equations are obtained.