Experimental investigation on trap stagnant effect and sand flux in aeolian sand transport

A new isokinetic vertical sand trap is designed in this work, and the new trap has an advantage that airflows in all sampling tubes at different height can simultaneously approach the isokinetic state. The stagnant effect and vertical sand mass flux are experimentally investigated in a wind tunnel. Compared with the traditional passive sand trap, the new design greatly reduces the stagnant effect, and has higher efficiency at different heights and wind speeds. The results obtained in this Letter also show the stagnant effect of the sand trap not only changes the total efficiency of the sand collection, but also the distribution of the vertical sand flux. The new isokinetic sand trap has good performance and can be applied to study the sand flux in aeolian sand transport. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.