PARAMETER-IDENTIFICATION FOR SEDIMENT ROUTING IN RIVERS

Sediment routing in rivers can be described in terms of three one dime nsional equations: the Saint Venant continuity and dynamic equations o f motion, and sediment mass balance. The solution of these equations r equires two supplementary relationships for friction resistance and se diment transport, which contain empirical constants in one form or the other. It is often difficult to determine these empirical constants a priori with any degree of certainty. One method of determining the co nstants in a particular situation is to optimise on observed river dat a. This paper deals with such an investigation. In this investigation a novel coupled linear implicit method is used to solve the sediment r outing equations and the sediment routing parameters are identified by using the gradient techniques of optimisation. These are applied to r eal river data for the Missouri River.