Laboratory Geosciences: Modelling Surface Processes

A special issue of Geosciences (ISSN 2076-3263).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2018) | Viewed by 12613

Special Issue Editor

Interdepartmental Centre for Industrial Research in Building and Construction - Fluid Dynamics Unit, University of Bologna, Via del Lazzaretto 15/5, 40131 Bologna, Italy
Interests: laboratory experiments and advanced measurement instrumentation; landscape evolution; surface processes; morphodynamics of river networks

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The intention of this Special Issue of Geosciences is to provide an overview regarding the broad field of advanced measurement techniques used to track the dynamics of surface processes and the formation of river networks by means of laboratory experiments.

To date, many numerical models can reproduce, dynamically, the evolution of landscapes forced by atmospheric drivers like precipitation and flowing water, but only scarce research is available on the reproduction of involved phenomena under a physical point of view, focused at the laboratory scale. To fill the gap, new measurement techniques (e.g. structure-from-motion, LiDAR, motion and depth detectors, image processing) can be adopted, designing appropriate laboratory experiments that can give additional insights on the dynamic evolution of landscapes.

This Special Issue aims to cover, without being limited to, the broader field of reproducing the landscape evolution at the laboratory scale, showing new measurement techniques and associated pros and cons.

For planned papers, an abstract will be requested. The authors are required to submit the full manuscript by the deadline of 31 July 2018.

Dr. Michael Nones
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Geosciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • laboratory setup
  • advanced measurements
  • landscape evolution
  • surface processes
  • river networks

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Editorial

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3 pages, 167 KiB  
Editorial
Special Issue “Laboratory Geosciences: Modelling Surface Processes” in Geosciences
by Michael Nones
Geosciences 2018, 8(11), 386; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences8110386 - 25 Oct 2018
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1525
Abstract
In the last decades, new and advanced measurement techniques have been developed to track the dynamics of surface processes and the formation of river bedforms, bars and island as well as complex fluvial networks, gullies and rills by means of small-scale laboratory experiments, [...] Read more.
In the last decades, new and advanced measurement techniques have been developed to track the dynamics of surface processes and the formation of river bedforms, bars and island as well as complex fluvial networks, gullies and rills by means of small-scale laboratory experiments, aiming to integrate and support mathematical models [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Laboratory Geosciences: Modelling Surface Processes)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

17 pages, 5220 KiB  
Article
Efficiency of a Digital Particle Image Velocimetry (DPIV) Method for Monitoring the Surface Velocity of Hyper-Concentrated Flows
by Donatella Termini and Alice Di Leonardo
Geosciences 2018, 8(10), 383; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences8100383 - 19 Oct 2018
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3144
Abstract
Digital particle image velocimetry records high resolution images and allows the identification of the position of points in different time instants. This paper explores the efficiency of the digital image-technique for remote monitoring of surface velocity and discharge measurement in hyper-concentrated flow by [...] Read more.
Digital particle image velocimetry records high resolution images and allows the identification of the position of points in different time instants. This paper explores the efficiency of the digital image-technique for remote monitoring of surface velocity and discharge measurement in hyper-concentrated flow by the way of laboratory experiment. One of the challenges in the application of the image-technique is the evaluation of the error in estimating surface velocity. The error quantification is complex because it depends on many factors characterizing either the experimental conditions or/and the processing algorithm. In the present work, attention is devoted to the estimation error due either to the acquisition time or to the size of the sub-images (interrogation areas) to be correlated. The analysis is conducted with the aid of data collected in a scale laboratory flume constructed at the Hydraulic laboratory of the Department of Civil, Environmental, Aerospace and of Materials Engineering (DICAM)—University of Palermo (Italy) and the image processing is carried out by the help of the PivLab algorithm in Matlab. The obtained results confirm that the number of frames used in processing procedure strongly affects the values of surface velocity; the estimation error decreases as the number of frames increases. The size of the interrogation area also exerts an important role in the flow velocity estimation. For the examined case, a reduction of the size of the interrogation area of one half compared to its original size has allowed us to obtain low values of the velocity estimation error. Results also demonstrate the ability of the digital image-technique to estimate the discharge at given cross-sections. The values of the discharge estimated by applying the digital image-technique downstream of the inflow sections by using the aforementioned size of the interrogation area compares well with those measured. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Laboratory Geosciences: Modelling Surface Processes)
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11 pages, 4389 KiB  
Article
PHOTOSED—PHOTOgrammetric Sediment Erosion Detection
by Markus Noack, Gerhard Schmid, Felix Beckers, Stefan Haun and Silke Wieprecht
Geosciences 2018, 8(7), 243; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences8070243 - 30 Jun 2018
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 4338
Abstract
This work presents a novel high-resolution photogrammetric measuring technique (PHOTOSED) to study in detail the erosion behavior of cohesive sediments, or cohesive/non-cohesive sediment mixtures. PHOTOSED uses a semiconductor laser to project a pseudo-random pattern of light points on a sediment surface and applies [...] Read more.
This work presents a novel high-resolution photogrammetric measuring technique (PHOTOSED) to study in detail the erosion behavior of cohesive sediments, or cohesive/non-cohesive sediment mixtures. PHOTOSED uses a semiconductor laser to project a pseudo-random pattern of light points on a sediment surface and applies the Dense Optical Flow (DOF) algorithm to measure the erosion volume based on displacements of the projected light points during the sediment erosion process. Based on intensive calibration and verification experiments, the accuracy and applicability of the method has been validated for a wide range of erosion volumes, encompassing several orders of magnitude, which is required for investigations of natural sediment mixtures. The high spatial resolution of PHOTOSED is especially designed to detect the substantial variability of erosion rates during exemplary erosion experiments, which allows for further in-depth investigations of the erosion process of cohesive sediments and cohesive/non-cohesive sediment mixtures. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Laboratory Geosciences: Modelling Surface Processes)
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17 pages, 16147 KiB  
Article
Multicamera, Multimethod Measurements for Hydromorphologic Laboratory Experiments
by Alessio Radice and Barbara Zanchi
Geosciences 2018, 8(5), 172; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences8050172 - 10 May 2018
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3224
Abstract
The realization of hydromorphologic laboratory experiments on the propagation of aggrading or degrading sediment fronts requires simultaneous measurements of the sediment feeding rate, the profile of the free surface, and the flume bed elevation. In this study, five action cameras and different image-processing [...] Read more.
The realization of hydromorphologic laboratory experiments on the propagation of aggrading or degrading sediment fronts requires simultaneous measurements of the sediment feeding rate, the profile of the free surface, and the flume bed elevation. In this study, five action cameras and different image-processing techniques were employed to measure all the needed quantities automatically and with adequate temporal resolution. The measurement of the sediment feeding rate was determined by particle image velocimetry as a surrogate, correlated quantity: the surface velocity of the sediment flow along a vibrating channel was used as an upstream feeder. The profile of the free surface was measured by shooting an array of piezometers connected to the flume. Each piezometer pipe contained a buoyant black sphere that could be recognized by using tools for particle identification, thus determining the elevation of the free surface above the piezometric probe. Finally, the bed profile along the flume was measured at any instant by edge detection, locating the transition from a water layer to a sediment layer in images taken from the side of the flume. The paper describes the instrumentation and the methods, finally presenting the results obtained from a prototypal experiment. Potentialities and limitations of the proposed methods are discussed, together with some prospects on future use in systematic experimental campaigns. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Laboratory Geosciences: Modelling Surface Processes)
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