Bed-load transport equation on arbitrarily sloping beds

This work presents a simple tool to evaluate bed-load transport intensity and direction on arbitrarily sloping beds with local longitudinal and transversal inclinations up to 25 degrees and in the case of uniform sediments and low values of the applied Shields stress. The tool is composed of a set of equations which fit the results obtained via an iterative procedure by the semiempirical model recently proposed in 2003 by Parker, Seminara, and Solari. The tool provides a fully nonlinear description of bed-load transport which overcomes the limitations of linear formulations developed in the case of negligible local bed inclinations. The proposed tool can be easily implemented in any morphodynamic model to describe the evolution of the bottom topography and to capture the dynamics of relevant sloping beds.