Critical condition of erosion for cohesive deposits

Many researches have been focused on the transport and fate of sediments during flushing operations in reservoirs. A successful operation of flushing sediment through a reservoir depends on the control of water-sediment interaction. One of the important processes during flushing is the critical condition for erosion of previous deposits. To understand the critical conditions of the reservoir deposits in erosion processes, experiments were conducted. It is found that each fitting curve of measured velocity or shear stress against erosion time corresponding to a given erosion depth will approach a constant value which may be defined as the critical condition to initiate the movement of cohesive deposits.