In gravel-bed rivers, monitoring porosity is vital for fluvial geomorphology assessment as
well as in river ecosystem management. Conventional porosity prediction methods are restricting in
terms of the number of considered factors and are also time-consuming. We present a framework,
the combination of the Discrete Element Method (DEM) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN),
to study the relationship between porosity and the grain size distribution. DEM was applied to
simulate the 3D structure of the packing gravel-bed and fine sediment infiltration processes under
various forces. The results of theDEMsimulations were verified with the experimental data of porosity
and fine sediment distribution. Further, an algorithm was developed for calculating high-resolution
results of porosity and grain size distribution in vertical and horizontal directions from the DEM
results, which were applied to develop a Feed Forward Neural Network (FNN) to predict bed porosity
based on grain size distribution. The reliable results of DEM simulation and FNN prediction confirm
that our framework is successful in predicting porosity change of gravel-bed.
«
In gravel-bed rivers, monitoring porosity is vital for fluvial geomorphology assessment as
well as in river ecosystem management. Conventional porosity prediction methods are restricting in
terms of the number of considered factors and are also time-consuming. We present a framework,
the combination of the Discrete Element Method (DEM) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN),
to study the relationship between porosity and the grain size distribution. DEM was applied to
simulate the 3D structure...
»