Experimental Study on Critical Flow Conditions Causing Damage of Grass-Covered Revetment

Flexible vegetations supply great effect on river bank protection. It is important to study the critical flow conditions, including bed shear stress, scour duration and frictional velocity etc, causing damage of grass-covered revetment. Laboratory experiments prove that, destruction of turf can be estimated by observing the variation of water head. The experimental shear stress above vegetation zone has nonlinear relation with velocity square, which agrees with theoretic derivation. Before the turf destruction occurring, shear stress above vegetation zone increases with the scour duration and then goes to stabilization. This mentioned Shear stress will change suddenly when local scour damage happens, or keep stabilization while affine damage is on-going. Under the same flow conditions, the critical bed shear stress of reinforced turf is larger than that of natural turf. As far as the same-form revetments are concerned, the bed shear stress at breaking point increases with the flow velocity.