9 Lecture 2: Principles of Fluid Flow Chapter 3 I. Fluid dynamics is an extraordinarily complicated field. A whole course.

courses, a huge number of books, endless research articles, and late night talk shows. Several

-We will get the very simple basics of fluid flow with just enough terms and concepts to a) Be useful. b) Be educated. -This is a highly complicated and mathematical portion of geology. Cutting-edge research employs sophisticated mathematical models of current movement, wave motion, and particle entrainment to further our understanding of what causes rivers to erode and deposit and beaches to come and go. II. What moves clastic sedimentary particles? Fluids (water, air, ice).

Main Question: How to entrain a particle? A necessary first step to erosion. A. Basic forces acting on a particle: Gravity + Drag Force + Lift Force.

Fluid Flow F(lift ) Part icles on Bot t om of St ream Channel F(drag )

F(gravit y)
Drag Force: Measure of friction between water and channel bottom/particles Lift Force is a result of the Bernoulli effect.

P + gh +
starting conditions

1 2

v 2 = Constant

dynamic

where P = pressure (atm plus H2 O), Rho = fluid density, g = gravitational constant, h = height above some reference point, and v = velocity. P + Rho*g*h is static pressure (exists when fluid at rest; v = 0, yields constant) while 1/2 Rho*v2 is the dynamic pressure. When the current moves over the curved surface of the grain, its velocity locally increases, which forces P on the grain to be reduced to maintain the value of the

10 Constant, while the hydrostatic pressure remains the same. The net result is a lifting force. Blow over sheet of paper and make it rise.
Higher Velocity yields Lift!

Normal Velocity

Add three vectors head to tail to get final resulting force.

F tot

al

Flift Fgravity Fdrag If Flift is great enough, particle is lifted up and away.

Summary: The faster the current, the more likely that the sum of these 3 vector forces is up. Once a particle is lifted up, it can be easily transported down stream. Miscellaneous complications for modelers: Friction; grain size, shape, and sorting (need to rotate particles out from amongst their peers); bed roughness; cohesion of small particles due to electronic attractions. Very Messy! B. Laminar vs turbulent flow. A set of particles placed into a laminar flow trace parallel lines. In turbulent flow, they go all over the place. Eddies and swirls mark turbulent flow.

Laminar Flow
nt F ule w rb
lo

Tu

At low velocities, water (or air) can undergo laminar flow. As you increase the flow velocity, the flow will eventually become turbulent. What causes this transition?

11 A moving fluid feels a competition between two forces: a. Inertial forces: an object in motion tends to remain in motion. A slight deviation from a straight line is magnified by the inertia of a fluid 'particle', thus carrying it further from the straight path. It skids out of control like a NASCAR driver coming out of a curve. In nature, movement in a perfectly straight line is very rare so particles within a fluid naturally follow slightly curved pathways. b. Viscous forces tend to keep a fluid flowing in a nice laminar manner. Viscosity = ability of fluids to resist flow. Tar is highly viscous, water is not. A highly viscous fluid resists excess flow because it takes so much energy to force currents to move from side to side or in eddies and swirls. Thus, particles in this fluid tend to flow in a straight line. In a low viscosity fluid, like air, it takes very little effort for particles to flow in swirling, turbulent paths (as in dust motes in a rising column of warmed air). Dr. Reynolds has expressed the balance between these two factors as a dimensionless ratio called the Reynolds Number:

Re =

VD

where V = current velocity, D = Depth of flow (e.g. river, glacier), (rho) is the fluid density, and (mu) is the fluid viscosity. V and constitute the inertial forces (momentum of fluid) and are in the numerator; opposes them in the denominator. At low velocity, flow is laminar. As fluid velocity increases, inertial forces become increasingly important. At some point, determined experimentally (as opposed to theoretically), the flow goes from laminar to turbulent, and remains turbulent at all higher velocities. Usually, values less than Re < 500 are laminar while Re > 2000 are turbulent. Numbers aren't useful for us, but for fluid dynamics types. (Why a dimensionless number?? That way folks can do small-scale experiments and scale conclusions up to large systems. This makes it easier to compare large (natural) and small (lab) systems.) In nature, almost all fluid motion you will see is turbulent (water, air). Lots of swirling motion in streams, rivers, wind, waves, etc. Glaciers are best example of laminar flow: a slowly moving solid that behaves like a very viscous fluid. C. Channels affect fluid flow. 1. Slope: Steep channel allows water to flow faster.

12

Slower Faster

Faster flow = more erosive (lift+drag) and more turbulent. 2. Water Depth Friction between the channel bottom and the fluid imparts a shear stress; this force retards fluid flow and is exerted parallel to the surface of interest. Shear stress is greatest right at surface and decreases upwards, causing the velocity of the fluid to be lowest at the bottom and increase upwards.
Flo w Direct ion

Glacier
Laminar Fluid Flow Velo cit y

Air/Water
Turb ulent Fluid Flow Velo cit y

Boundary Shear St resses

Smooth Channel

Boundary Layer Boundary Layer

Boundary layer = depth over which friction with channel walls creates a velocity gradient. A shallow flow can have its entire depth within the boundary layer, whereas a deep flow can have only part of its thickness retarded by the channel walls. Thus, a river can flow faster than water running over a parking lot. Note that turbulent flow conditions bring higher velocity flow nearer to channel surface. This increases the drag and lift forces, thus leading to more effective scouring of the channel. Turbulence is very important for Erosion! Velocity profile in a channel when viewed from above:

13

Channel Sides

Fluid Motion Laminar Fluid Flow Velocity Turbulent Fluid Flow Velocity

valley glacier

river/stream

3. Smoothness of channel surfaces: In nature rocks, trees, abandoned cars, have two effects: i. lots of trees and bushes exert a lot of friction resistance against fluid flow, thus slowing flow velocities a lot. ii. obstructions force water to flow around them, greatly increasing turbulence and potentially focusing high velocity flow against the sides or bottom of a channel. Overall stream velocity decreased, but erosion could locally increase. 4. The viscous sublayer: Molecular attractions right at the surface of the channel create a thin layer of high effective viscosity ==> slower flow velocities, and even laminar flow within the viscous sublayer. The viscous sublayer protects fine particles from the higher stream flow velocites because they are too small to poke up through this sublayer. This makes it tougher to erode away these particles. Larger particles poke up through layer, causing local turbulence to destroy the sublayer and thus to scour them away. This effect is of prime importance to people studying how sediments are transported on the seafloor. Bottom currents are relatively slow and some sizes of seafloor particles are fine enough to be protected by the sublayer. Bottom current velocities can vary according to climate variations, so folks are interesting in using grain size to infer past bottom water current velocities as they either respond to or help drive climate change. D. Particle Entrainment Experiments As noted earlier, it is extremely difficult to calculate using physics (lift, drag, etc.) when exactly particles of various sizes are moved from fluid flow. So, folks did some experiments. Weak currents should move only small particles whereas higher velocities can move the larger ones. Should be a simple relation of current velocity and particle size (volume --> mass). But, relation is more complicated! The Hjlstrom Diagram is a classic of sedimentology. He put a series of sediment grain sizes in a series of straight-sided channels and slowly increased the currents until the particles moved.

14

Movement
1000

200 cm/ s 50 Unconsolidat ed Clay & Silt 20

No Movement

Clay & Silt 0 .0 0 1

Fine Sand 0 .0 5 0 .5

Sand 2

Gravel and Bo uld ers 1000

Gr a in Siz e ( m m )

Provides an indication of the threshold velocity (minimum v) required to entrain (or erode) particles. Velocity vs. grain size graph: region of no movement, region of movement, and transition zone (particles may or may not move depending on such picky details as grain packing and shape). Distinction between -consolidated clay and silt (very cohesive (sticky) & difficult to move) -unconsolidated clay and silt (not very cohesive, but due to electrical attraction between particles and the tiny size of the particles relative to the viscous sublayer, which insulates small particles from currents, the relation between current velocity and particle entrainment is broken.

III.

Once particles start moving, what happens?

An object in motion tends to stay in motion. As long as current is fast enough, particles will keep moving. Traction: grains rolling or sliding over bottom Saltation: grains hopping and bouncing along bottom (Spanish: saltar, saltamontes) Bed Load: combined traction and saltation grain populations Suspended Load: grains carried by current a considerable distance without settling to bottom. Clays and silts during normal flow; floods often suspend sands. Grains are kept in suspension by turbulence: in a river, there is an average flow downstream. But, turbulent eddies make local currents that go from side to side, up and down stream, and vertically up and down. It is the strength of the upwards eddies that determines the size of the particles that are kept in suspension.

15 Grains can shift back and forth between these gradational categories when currents (including turbulence) increases or decreases. IV. After erosion and transport comes Deposition: Stokes Law

A. When a spherical particle >1m (colloidal) is released in a still fluid (lake, ocean, pool), it will initially accelerate due to the force of gravity. When the friction resistance of the fluid is equal and opposite to that of gravity, the velocity becomes constant (= terminal velocity) as described by Stokes Law:
2 ( s ) g D Vs = = CD 2 , 18

which involves the size of the particle D, the viscosity of the fluid , the density contrast between the particle (ps ) and fluid (p), and the acceleration due to gravity (g). Thus, a viscous fluid, like ice, generally can transport much larger particles than a fluid like water, and water larger particles than air. Also, dense minerals, such as garnet or magnetite, tend to settle out faster than lighter ones. But most interest focuses on major silicate minerals in water. Most of the variables thus become constants that can be lumped as "C". Note that V varies as the square of particle diameter! Size is the killer variable. Big particles sink MUCH faster than tiny ones. Very much more difficult to keep a 1 cm pebble in suspension than 1 mm sand. B. From Stokes' Law, we can take a graduated cylinder of known height, dump some mud in it, and predict how long it will take the various size fractions to settle to the bottom. People do this to measure sediment grain sizes, especially silt and smaller sizes. C. Suspended loads: If the upwards eddy velocities in a turbulent current are higher than the settling velocity of a particle of given size, then the river can carry that grain size in the suspended load. Otherwise the particles are transferred to the bed load or deposited. Since larger particles sink so much faster than small ones, sand and larger particles are bed load except during floods or crashing waves. Need very turbulent flow! Since eddy motions tend to slow the vertical descent of particles, turbulence creates an apparent viscosity ('eddy viscosity') that is commonly several OoM higher than that of a still fluid. Thus, Stokes' Law is no longer accurate in turbulent waters. D. More complications: Grain shape: Nonspherical particles take longer because, like a leaf falling from a tree, the settling path is neither straight nor vertical. Difficult to quantify because

16 -their resistance to settling varies as the orientation of the particle -their orientations change due to inertial effects ('swoopy motion'). Grain size: Particles bigger than 0.2 mm diameter fall fast enough to cause turbulence, which slows their descent. Unfortunately, this size range includes everything coarser than very fine sands. Sands are a sedimentologist's favorite sediment, so this is sad for them. And most things finer than very fine sands are not spherical, so life is indeed difficult. There are work-around fixes to this problem. Clumping: Clay-sized particles should theoretically take years to settle out of suspension in the oceans (several kms deep). However, it turns out that people have measured the rate at which particles settle in the oceans, and it is on the order of days, which is way too fast. The answer: aggregates. When river mud hits salty seawater, the clays clump together and settle as larger particles. In open ocean, critters eat the clays by mistake and package it into much larger particles technically known as poop. Poop particles plummet. If you ever want to use Stokes' Law, read up on it carefully!