Stochastic Nature of Flow Turbulence and Sediment Particle Entrainment over the Ripples at the Bed of Open Channel Using Image Processing Technique

The formation of bed topography is the result of a complicated interaction between flow and sediment particles along the bed. Bed form and the geometry of ripples are also a function of bed roughness, median diameter of sediment particles and flow characteristics for example shear stress, separation and Froude number (Mogridge et al. 1994). Ripple geometry and its interaction with flow structure has been studied by many investigators; for example, Bagnold (1946), Carstens et al. (1969), Mogridge et al. (1994), Yalin (1977), Khelifa and Ouellet (2000), Miller and Komar (1980), and Nielsen (1992). In these studies, the geometry of bed ripples was found to be a function of turbulent shear stress parameters. Raudkivi (1997) pointed out that the ripples and vortices within the shear layer are affected by the flow depth, velocity distribution and shear stress on the bed. Despite more than three decades of investigation, there is still insufficient information to characterize ripple-flow interaction in adequate detail and over a range of turbulent flow conditions. One area where this lack of information exists is the application of image processing for particle entrainment and analyze of the turbulence characteristics and flow over ripples. To study the flow structure over the ripples, Sajjadi et al. (1996) found that the vortices that form in the lee of ripples are important for the entrainment of sediment particles. Keshavarzi and Ball (1999) used image processing technique to record entrained and deposited particles over flat bed and found that there is an intermittent nature for particles entrainment and deposition over the bed. Jeremy et al. (2005) used high resolution superVHS video system to monitor the development of the sand bed over a flat bed and observed that initiation occurs at relatively low flow strengths, where sediment transport is patchy and sporadic. Lajeunesse et al. (2010) used high speed video imaging system to record the trajectories of the moving particles over flat bed and observed that entrained particles exhibit intermittent motion composed of the succession of periods of flight and rest. Bennett and Best (1996) conducted a series of experiment over fixed bed ripples and compared the


Introduction
The formation of bed topography is the result of a complicated interaction between flow and sediment particles along the bed.Bed form and the geometry of ripples are also a function of bed roughness, median diameter of sediment particles and flow characteristics for example shear stress, separation and Froude number (Mogridge et al. 1994).Ripple geometry and its interaction with flow structure has been studied by many investigators; for example, Bagnold (1946), Carstens et al. (1969), Mogridge et al. (1994), Yalin (1977), Khelifa and Ouellet (2000), Miller and Komar (1980), and Nielsen (1992).In these studies, the geometry of bed ripples was found to be a function of turbulent shear stress parameters.Raudkivi (1997) pointed out that the ripples and vortices within the shear layer are affected by the flow depth, velocity distribution and shear stress on the bed.Despite more than three decades of investigation, there is still insufficient information to characterize ripple-flow interaction in adequate detail and over a range of turbulent flow conditions.One area where this lack of information exists is the application of image processing for particle entrainment and analyze of the turbulence characteristics and flow over ripples.To study the flow structure over the ripples, Sajjadi et al. (1996) found that the vortices that form in the lee of ripples are important for the entrainment of sediment particles.Keshavarzi and Ball (1999) used image processing technique to record entrained and deposited particles over flat bed and found that there is an intermittent nature for particles entrainment and deposition over the bed.Jeremy et al. (2005) used high resolution super-VHS video system to monitor the development of the sand bed over a flat bed and observed that initiation occurs at relatively low flow strengths, where sediment transport is patchy and sporadic.Lajeunesse et al. (2010) used high speed video imaging system to record the trajectories of the moving particles over flat bed and observed that entrained particles exhibit intermittent motion composed of the succession of periods of flight and rest.Bennett and Best (1996) conducted a series of experiment over fixed bed ripples and compared the spatial structure of flow over fixed symmetrical ripples to reveal the contrasts in the dynamics of the flow separation zone over ripples.Kostachuck and Church (1993), Julien and Klassen (1995), Kostaschuk and Villard (1996), Carling et al. (2000) and Kostachuck (2000) have conducted field studies and concluded that the shear related coherent structures were very important in bed form development and bed stability.Consideration of the results from these studies indicates that the turbulence characteristics have a direct influence on sediment entrainment and the ripple geometry.

Coherent structure of flow over the bed
Analysis of the turbulence characteristics is based on the concept of the bursting phenomenon which was initially introduced by Kline et al. (1967) as a means of describing the transfer of momentum between the turbulent and laminar regions near a boundary.They defined bursting process as; Sweep event ( ' 0, ' 0 u v   ); Ejection event ( ' 0, ' 0 Outward interaction event ( ' 0, ' 0 u v   ); and Inward interaction event ( ' 0, ' 0 u v   ) (Figure 1).The four bursting events have been identified having different effects on the mode and rate of sediment transport (Bridge and Bennett 1992).Particle entrainment from the bed is closely correlated to the sweep event (Thorne et al. 1989;Nelson et al. 1995;Drake et al. 1988;Nakagwa and Nezu 1978;Grass 1971and Keshavarzi and Ball 1997, 1999).Also the contribution of sweep and ejection events has been found to be more important than outward and inward interactions.Furthermore, sweep and ejection events occur more frequently than outward and inward interactions (Nakagwa and Nezu 1978;Thorne et al. 1989;Keshavarzi and Ball 1997).In addition to the above characteristics, the average magnitude of the shear stress during sweep event being much higher than the time averaged shear stress (Keshavarzi and Ball 1997).A number of studies, for example, Offen and Kline (1975) and Papanicolaou et al. (2002) investigated the characteristics of the bursting process and its effect on particle motion.Consideration of this research led Yen (2002) to point out the necessity to incorporate the bursting process into the modelling of turbulent flow and sediment transport.Jafari Mianaei andKeshavarzi (2008, 2009) found that at the stoss side of ripples, ejection and sweep events and at the lee side of the ripple outward interaction and inward interaction events were dominant.The studies by Ojha and Mazumder (2008) showed that the ratio of shear stress for sweep and ejection events along the dunes varied in an oscillatory pattern at the near bed region, whereas such patterns disappear towards the outer flow.Also they found that along the dune length, sweep events contribute to shear stress generation more than other events.Termini and Sammartano (2009) investigated the effects of the variation of bed roughness conditions on the vertical distributions frequency of the occurrence of ejection and sweep events and concluded that the occurrence of sweep events increases as the bed roughness increases.
The structure of turbulent flow over the ripples in the bottom of an open channel is important for understanding of sediment particle entrainment and its transport.Two important issues which need to be understood in sediment movement are the stochastic nature of instantaneous shear stresses over a ripple bed and how it influences on sediment entrainment and transport.Therefore remains the necessity for sophisticated laboratory equipment to understand stochastic nature of flow over the ripples together with the hydrodynamic properties.Using the Acoustic Doppler Velocity meter (Micro-ADV) to measure three dimensional velocities, CCD camera to record images of particle motion and image processing technique enables to provide an accurate measurement of flow structure and particle entrainment from the bed.

Quadrant decomposition of velocity fluctuations
The bursting process consists of four categories of event; these categories are defined by the quadrant of the event.As shown in Figure 1, the events are: Fig. 1.Quadrant analysis of bursting process The velocity fluctuations and u v  are defined as variations from the time-averaged (mean) velocities in the longitudinal and vertical directions, ( u and v ), respectively.Algebraically, they are defined by Where; 1 n being is the number of instantaneous velocity samples.The time-averaged instantaneous shear stress (Reynolds shear stress) at each point of flow is defined as: As shown by Jafari Mianaei andKeshavarzi (2008, 2009), the distribution of the instantaneous velocities is influenced significantly by presence of ripples.

Transformation of instantaneous shear stress
The magnitude of the time-averaged shear stress for each quadrant was found to be different, and to differ from the time-averaged instantaneous shear stress for the flow.The instantaneous shear stress for each event was normalized by the time-averaged shear stress at that point within the flow.Expressed algebraically, the non-dimensional instantaneous shear stress (C) was determined by In order to transform the normalized data into a normally distributed parameter, Keshavarzi and Ball (1997) applied a Box-Cox transformation (Box and Cox 1964) to transform the instantaneous shear stress to a normal distribution.Therefore, a Box-Cox transformation was applied to determine the mean magnitude of the normalized instantaneous shear stress.For this study, a Box-Cox power transformation was applied to transform the magnitude of instantaneous shear stress into a normal distribution.A Box-Cox power transformation for the parameter (C) is defined for non-zero values of k by: where K is a constant and  is transformation power.If all of the values in the time series are greater than zero then the constant K usually is set to zero.Keshavarzi and Ball (1997) applied the Box-Cox transformation to a full data set and suggested that K is equal to 0.272 for sweep events and 0.28 for ejection events.The inverse transformation which is the transformation B -1 of B(C) is given by: Mean values of the transformed data B(C) for each quadrant were calculated using The inverse Box-Cox transformation was applied to these mean values to enable determination of the time-averaged shear stress for each event and in a point of flow.Consideration of the distribution of time-averaged shear stress over the ripples indicates that there is an oscillatory pattern for the instantaneous shear stress along the bed.

Contribution probability of coherent flow and bursting events
Based on two dimensional velocity fluctuations, the occurrence probability of the bursting events for each quadrant is defined as; Where P k is the occurrence probability of an event in a quadrant, n k is the number of occurrences of each event, N is the total number of events and the subscript represents the individual quadrants (k=1…4).Using the above equations, the probability of each quadrant was computed at each point of flow within the depth.The contributions of coherent structures, such as the sweep (quadrant IV) and ejection (quadrant II) events, to momentum transfer have been extensively studied through quadrant analyses and probability analyses based on two-dimensional velocity information.Using similar techniques, the contributions of the four events to the entrainment and motion of sediment particles were determined from the experimental measurements.
The studies by Jafari Mianaei andKeshavarzi (2008, 2009) indicates that at the stoss side of ripples, the time-averaged instantaneous shear stress of ejection and sweep events were dominant to the outward interaction and inward interaction events and at the lee side of the ripple it was vice versa.In other studies for example by Ojha and Mazumder (2008) it is shown that the ratio of time-averaged shear stress for sweep and ejection events along the dunes vary in an oscillatory pattern at the near bed region, whereas such pattern seems to disappear towards the outer flow.Termini and Sammartano (2009) concluded that the occurrence of sweep events increases as the bed roughness increases.

Modelling of time series of bursting events using markov process
As mentioned in previous sections, bursting events can be categorised into four quadrant zones which are outward interaction, ejection, inward interaction and sweep.The probability of movement from one category or zone to another is important.This movement of the events was investigated using a time series model.Consideration of the data indicates that the bursting process occurred in zone 4 at the first time step.In the second time step, the bursting event occurred in quadrant 1 and then the next bursting event occurred in quadrant 4. The next 4 bursting events were in the same quadrant.As a result, the sequence of 20 bursting events was found to be IV, I, IV, IV, IV, IV, IV, I, II III, II, II, II, IV, IV, IV, IV, IV, I, I, I. Hence, the turbulence of the flow results in a temporal sequence of bursting events.For the purposes of this study, the data were classified as discrete random variables and, hence, were analysed as a stochastic process or a Markov process.A discrete random variable {St} was defined as being a bursting event in a quadrant at time (t).Therefore, at time t, St can be in either quadrant 1, 2, 3 and 4, (outward interaction, ejection, inward interaction and sweep), respectively.In this study, the change in state was defined as a movement between quadrants and the transition probabilities for these changes were determined.It is worth noting that an event can be stable (the next bursting event occurs in the same quadrant) or can move to another quadrant.A Markov analysis looks at a sequence of events and analyzes the tendency of one event to be followed by another event.In the study reported herein, zero, first and second order Markov processes were considered.Details of these are According to the concept of a first order Markove process, the probability of the next situation depends on the current situation, but it does not depend on the particular way that the model system arrived at the current situation.The transition probabilities of first order Markov process can be computed as: where n i,j is the number of occurrences from situation i to situation j, n i. is the number of i's in the series followed by another situations, so that n i.= n i1+ n i2+ n i3+ n i4 .The p i,j is estimated as the fraction of points for which S t =i is followed by points with S t+1 =j.
A second order Markov process defines the current situation, based on the two previous situations.The present situation S t+1 can be found based on the situations at S t and S t-1 .It means that the situation at (t+1) depends on the situation at (t) and (t-1).The second order Markov process is defined mathematically as: The transition probabilities of second order Markov process were obtained from the conditional relative frequencies of transition counts.It can be computed as;   A zero order Markov process was examined also for comparison.If a zero-order Markov process exists then the current situation does not depend on the previous situation.The probabilities for a zero-order Markov process can be computed as: where ni is number of situation i and n equal total number of sampling data.
To find the most appropriate model for prediction of the occurrence of bursting events, two criteria can be used for assessment of the best order of the Markov process; these criteria are:


The Akaike information criterion (AIC) (Akaike 1974;Tong, 1975); and  The Bayesian information criterion (BIC) (Schwartz, 1978;Katz, 1971).Both of these criteria are based on the log-likelihood functions for the transition probabilities of fitted Markov process.These log-likelihood functions depend on the transition counts and the transition probabilities.The log-likelihood functions for zero, first and second order Markov process are; 4 0 1 ln( ) The AIC and BIC statistics are computed for each trial order m, using where s equals 4 and represents the four quadrant zones.
The order m which produces the minimum value in either Equation ( 20) or ( 21) is considered to be the most appropriate order of the Markov process.Keshavarzi and Shirvani (2002) found that the minimum value for both the AIC and BIC criteria was found to occur for a first-order process.Therefore, Keshavarzi and Shirvani (2002) proposed that a first-order Markov process is an appropriate model for the occurrence of bursting events.Hence, the type of bursting event at time t n+1 depends only on the type of bursting event at time t n and, conversely, the situation at time t n depends only on the situation at time t n-1 .

Organization of the bursting events
The organization of bursting events and the associated coherent structures is still a major concern and the focus of many studies.To find the organization of coherent structures in the flow Keshavarzi and Shirvani (2002) applied a conditional probability analysis to the experimental data and therefore a conditional probabilities or empirical conditional probabilitiesy is proposed for organisation of the bursting process.
Base on the development of the conditional probabilities, Keshavarzi and Shirvani (2002) identified three movement categories.These categories of movement between bursting event states were:  Stable transition -a stable transition or movement between sequential bursting events is defined as being events that remain in the same quadrant for two consecutive time steps, i.e. t i and ti+1 .


Marginal or lateral transition -a marginal or lateral movement between sequential bursting events occurs when a bursting event in the following time step occurs in one of the neighbor quadrants, for example between quadrants 1 and 4, or 1 and 2, or 2 and 3 (or vice versa).


Cross transition -a cross transition or movement between sequential bursting events is defined as being events where sequential bursting events are diametrically opposed, for example from quadrant 1 to 3 or from quadrant 4 to 2. These categories of movement between bursting events were applied in consideration of the occurrence of bursting events recorded in the experimental data.Points to note about the sequence of bursting events are:  First, it was found that the most probable next bursting event in a sequence occurs with a stable transition.This arises from the stable transition being stronger (having a higher probability) than marginal and cross transitions.In other words, when an event occurs in one of the quadrant zones at time step t i , the probability of the event to stay in the same zone at time step t i+1 is higher than other probabilities.Additionally it was apparent that, zone 4 is more stable than others.The stability of the events was sorted 4, 2, 1, and 3, in which the event in zone 4 (sweep event) is the most stable and zone 3 (inward interaction event) has the minimum stability.


The second category of movement was the marginal or lateral transition.As previously noted, this movement was defined as bursting events occurring in neighbouring quadrants.Compared to other categories, this movement was not as strong as the stable category.Finally, the marginal transition occurred more frequently between quadrants 4 and 1 than between other quadrants.


The third and final category was the cross transition.This category had the lowest probability compared to the stable and marginal categories.

Image processing and application in sediment transport
In spite of the importance of the initiation of individual sediment particles motion, no generally accepted definition exists due to the difficulty in defining of incipient of individual particle motion.One important reason for the lack of a general definition is the difficulty of observing sediment particles at the initiation of motion.Recently, the use of image processing techniques for observing sediment particles motion has been considered in some research studies.Examples of these studies which have considered image processing techniques include Keshavarzi and Ball (1999), Jafari Mianaei and Keshavarzi (2009), Nelson et al. (1995), Best (1992) and Drake et al. (1988) who used image processing techniques as a tool to investigate the intermittent nature of particle entrainment.Arising from these studies, it was considered that the application of image processing has potential to assist in understanding the processes influencing incipient particle motion.Motion picture photography is uniquely capable of detailed observation, quantitative tracking, and measurement of bed particle movement in clear water.This technique can show the entrainment of particles from the bed, settlement of particles, speed of particle movement, transport mode, and resting periods of a particle on the bed.With the capturing and collection of these data, it is possible to develop a statistical description of particle entrainment or sediment particle motion at the bed.In this study attention is paid to define the initiation of sediment particle motion over a movable bed with consideration of the bursting processes arising from flow turbulence.In order to understand the processes, image processing techniques were used to observe the particle movement over a designated area of the bed.The observed motion of sediment particles was characterised and a statistical description of the initiation of sediment particle motion and its correlation to the turbulence characteristics of the flow determined.

Image analysis of particles in motion 8.1.1 Basic concepts
The signal in image processing is a physical measure of the light intensity for the image.In a digital image, the signals are a series of digits or numbers, which are organised as an array in a file.Shown in Figure 2 is the concept of how an image can be converted to a digital signal.A signal may be continuous or discrete.In image processing the signals are in the form of a discrete signal.In order to analyse a series of sequential images spatially and temporally, it is necessary to apply statistical tools to these arrays to ascertain similarities or discrepancies.
Fig. 2. The conversion process and digitising an image (after Keshavarzi and Ball, 1999)

Analysis techniques used
In order to analyse the captured images; two different techniques were used in this study.These techniques were: -A probability analysis of the entrained particles determined by counting the number of particles in motion at an instant.This approach was useful to obtain an exceedance probability of particles in motion in time respective to the exceedance probability of shear stresses of the sweep events at the bed.The number of particles entrained into motion was obtained through determination of the difference between sequential images.-Application of cross correlation and Fast Fourier transforms to determine the displacement of particle between images and hence the particle velocity.

The subtraction technique and particle counting
The difference between two images f(x,y) and g(x,y), can be expressed as; where h(x,y) is a new image.Two images can be compared by computing the difference between the light intensities at all pairs of corresponding pixels from image f(x,y) and image g(x,y) (Adrian 1991, Willert andGharib 1991).Here, this technique was used and a sequence of images were compared to find the number of particles which were entrained and deposited over a specified area and in a given time increment.A computer program written in C++ was used to read a sequence of images in binary format and to produce an output image which was the difference between the images.

Viewing of particles in new image
In order to view the difference between two images as an image, the subtracted light intensities must be kept between 0 and 255, where the entrained and deposited particles are denoted by black and white spots respectively.To keep the light intensities in this range, a value of 255 must be added to the light intensities derived from subtraction of two images and then the sum divided by two.From this computation, the difference between two images can be obtained and the difference viewed as a new image.Thus result of this procedure is shown in Figure 3  Shown in Figure 4 are two sequential images captured during experimental run with the computed difference between these two images.If the two images are compared, the differences between these images are apparent and can be observed in the produced image.
As shown in derived image, it is clear how many particles were entrained or deposited in a time increment.In the derived image the entrained particles appear as black spots and deposited particles are displayed as white spots.For statistical analysis of the particle entrained, a sequence of 81 images was compared in each experimental run.A manual counting of entrained particles was preferred due to the need for interpretation to ensure accurate counting of the particles.This need for interpretation arises from the potential for particles to be agitated but not moved.In this case the movement appears as a curved shadow line in the produced image and, therefore, was not considered as a moved particle.An example of this effect is shown in Figure 4. Keshavarzi and Ball (1999)  The movement of sand particles at the bed was observed and recorded with a high-resolution CCD camera.In order to get a clear picture; a slide projector was used to illuminate the specific area of the bed where the images were being recorded.Some precautions were made to ensure that a clear image was captured.For this analysis, a range of 5-25 frames per second were captured and digitized.The recorded video images were digitized into an array of 384 by 288 pixels with each pixel being quantized in 8 bits with light intensities ranging from 0 (for black) to 255 (for white).While the images were collected in colors, they were converted to a grey format for later analysis.The Grey format was selected due to its low requirements for storage and transfer to the computer.Using these derived images the numbers of the entrained and deposited particles in an instant of time were manually counted.In Figure 5 the time series of the number of entrained particles for a specified area are shown.

Relation between number of particle in motion and instantaneous shear stresses in sweep event
The entrainment of particles from a mobile bed in an open channel flow has been investigated in several studies; for example by Einstein and Li (1958), where it was pointed out that this process is stochastic in nature due to the effect of turbulence.The number of entrained particles over a specified area varies with time.The entrained particles at any time depend on the instantaneous turbulent shear stress arising from the velocity fluctuations and the instantaneous shear stresses at the bed.Shown in Figure 5 is the number of particles in motion, at an instant of time and consequently how the entrained number of particle varies with time.The entrainment process can be defined by considering the instantaneous shear stress in sweep events and also the instantaneous number of particles in motion.In a study of sediment entrainment from the bed, Williams et al. (1989) and Nelson et al. (1995) investigated and found a high correlation between the streamwise velocity component and the sediment flux.Additionally, Nelson et al. (1995) found that the transport rate tends to be higher when the vertical velocity and Reynolds momentum flux are angled towards the bed.They found the best correlation between the sediment flux and the streamwise velocity component to occur with a lag of 0.1 second and consequently they suggested a measuring frequency of 10 Hz would give the best results in terms of time scales.A frequency rate of 10 Hz therefore was selected for this investigation.Sediment Transport -Flow Processes and Morphology

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A cross-correlation analysis was undertaken between the number of entrained particles and the instantaneous shear stress in a sweep.Shown in Figure 6 are some examples the cross correlation between instantaneous shear stresses in sweep events and the instantaneous number of particles in motion.The above relationship was investigated using a cross correlation analysis between instantaneous shear stresses in sweep events and the number of particles entrained in a time increment.From this diagram, it is seen that no significant lag exists between the shear stresses in a sweep event and the number of particles in motion.
In Figure 6, the horizontal axis depicts the lag while the vertical axis depicts the cross correlation coefficient obtained.The numbers of entrained particles were counted in a sequence of produced images derived from the subtraction of sequential recorded images.
The dimensionless shear stress in sweep events was computed also from a time series of the velocity fluctuations, which was recorded simultaneously with the recording of the images.
A good correlation was found between the number of particles in motion and the instantaneous shear stress in a sweep event.The percentage of the area, which was eroded from a defined area of the bed, was investigated with respect to the instantaneous turbulent shear stress of bursting events.It was assumed that the observation area occupied by particles of an arbitrary shape is proportional to the mean diameter of the size fraction.In order to compute the fraction of area entrained, the number of particles entrained was counted and compared with the total observed area.For this case the particles resting on the bed was 2 mm and the observation area was 25 square cm.Thus, each particle has an area fraction of where a is the area of the entrained particles and is defined as (a = and A = L 2 is the sample area of the bed.From a quadrant analysis of velocity fluctuations, it was found that at a level of 5 mm from the bed downstream of the second ripple, Quadrants 1 and 3 were dominant when compared to Quadrants 2 and 4.This can be interpreted as an expectation that sedimentation should occur at this location.However, upstream of the ripple, Quadrants 2 and 4 were dominant to Quadrants 1 and 3. Therefore entrainment would be expected to occur at this location.These expectations are confirmed by measuring the bed profile over the ripples along the bed.Keshavarzi and Ball (1999) and measured the ratio of entrained particles to deposited particles along the channel and at the bed over the ripples.The experimental test by Jafari Mianaei andKeshavarzi (2008, 2009) 13.Bursting events at 20 mm from the bed around the transmitting transducer at 120 degree azimuth intervals.Acoustic beams were emitted from the transmitting transducers.The beams travelling through the water arrived at a measuring point, located 50 mm below the transducer.The sampling volume of the ADV is very small, providing high spatial resolution and allowing measurements to be taken close to within about 5 mm of the boundary.They were reflected by the ambient particles within the flow being received by the receiving transducers.The processing module performed the digital signal processing required to measure the Doppler shifts.The data acquisition software provided real-time display of the data in graphical and tabular forms.For increasing accuracy of velocity sampling, velocity range should be determined.The velocity range determines the maximum velocity that can be measured.Typically the lowest setting that will cover the expected range of velocities should be chosen to minimize inherent signal noise.The results of analysis of the contribution of the probability of the bursting events are presented in Table 1, 2 and 3.According to analysis of bursting event it was found that at the stoss side of ripples, quadrants (II) and (IV) were dominant to the quadrants (I) and (III) and at the lee side of the ripple it was vice versa.Also the transition probabilities of the bursting events were determined.The results showed that stable organizations of each class of the events had highest transition probabilities whereas cross organizations had lowest transition probabilities.Additionally, an effort was made to find the average inclination angle of the bursting events in quadrants (II) and (IV).The results showed that the mean angle of events in quadrants (II) and (IV) increases at the downstream of stoss side to the crest in each experimental test.Also, at the lee side where the sediment particles were deposited, the inclination angles had the highest values.At the mobile bed part, an image processing technique was used to determine amount of deposited and entrained sediment particles over the ripples.The bed form movement was recorded using a digital camera taking pictures through a clear Plexiglas sidewall.These photographs were taken 1500 picture in 60s.Captured photographs were digitized.Resulting digital images were then used to quantify both the deposited and entrained in selected points over ripples.The results of captured picture in image processing are shown in Tables 4 to 6.If the ratio of deposited to entrained particles be more than 1, it means that deposition is dominant to entrainment and for less than 1, it is vice versa.As could be seen in the Tables 4, 5 and 6, at the stoss side of ripples, ratio of deposited to entrained particles is less than 1 and at the lee side it is more than 1.It shows that at the stoss side of ripples, erosion is dominant to deposition and at the lee side it is vice versa.Variation of shear stress

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at the fixed bed part showed that at the stoss side of the ripple, domination of shear at quadrant (II) and quadrant (IV) causes sediment transport towards the crest of ripple and domination of shear at the quadrant (I) and quadrant (III) causes deposition at the lee side.Obtained results in this part, confirm the results of shear stress analysis at fixed bed part in the case of occurring erosion at stoss side and deposition at lee side of ripples.Therefore, the sediment bed load transport in the shape of ripples could be interpreted as entrainment of sediment particles at the stoss side toward the crest and deposition of the particles at the lee side.Frequently occurring such mechanism causes sediment transport in the shape of ripples at the bed of open channel and rivers.Ratio 1.0 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 1.0 1.0 1.1 0.9 0.9 0.8 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.8 0.9 1.1 1.1 Ratio 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 1.0 1.0 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.1 Table 6.Ratio of deposited particles to entrained particles for run (c)

Conclusion
In this study, the flow structure over the ripples was investigated experimentally.The focus of this study was the measurement and analysis of the dominant bursting events and the flow structures over ripples in the bed of a channel.Two sets of ripples 1) Symmetrical bell shaped ripples with different sinuosity wave length and 2) Asymmetrical triangular shaped with different wavelength were tested in a comprehensive laboratory study.The velocities of flow over the ripples were measured at the threshold of motion in three dimensions using an Acoustic Doppler Velocity meter (Micro-ADV) with a sampling rate of 50 Hz.These velocities were measured at 5, 10 15, 20, 25, 30 50 and 60 mm from the bed at 16 longitudinal positions along the flume for a total of 128 points.At the same time the particle motion was recorded using CCD camera.An image processing technique was used to extract information from the recorded images.Consideration of these results showed that upstream of the first ripple, bursting events in quadrants 2 and 4 are dominant, however, downstream of the ripple, the bursting events in quadrants 1 and 3 are dominant and that sediment deposition occurred downstream of the ripple.

Preface
It is my pleasure to write the preface of the book "Sediment Transport -Flow and Morphological Processes" published by Intech Open Access Publisher.The transport of sediment in the turbulent flow comprises of complex phenomena.Although sediment transport due to water flow is directly related with long-term and short-term alteration of the earth's surface, which has significance in science, engineering and environmental applications, up until now the scientific progress in quantifying the relevant processes has been rather slow.This explains the reason for abundance of empiricism and independent field observations in this discipline.It has been several decades since the advent of our understanding on micro-level turbulence properties of fluid flows that we have started to apply our knowledge on turbulence for transport in geophysical boundary layers.
Intech Open Access Publisher has taken a good step to publish a series of books on the issues of sediment transport.The participation to the current book is by special invitation to authors selected based on their previous contributions in recognized scientific journals.Consequently, contents of the chapters are the reflections of the authors' research thoughts.
This book provides indications on current knowledge, research and applications of sediment transport processes.The first three chapters of the book present basic and advanced knowledge on flow mechanisms and transport.These are followed by examples of modeling efforts and individual case studies on erosion-deposition and their environmental consequences.I believe that the materials of this book would help a wide range of readers to update their insight on fluvial transport processes.
Finally, I would like to thank Intech Open Access Publisher for inviting me to contribute as a book editor.Special thanks are also due to the Publishing Process Manager for her cooperation and help during preparation of the book.

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The Selection Process
Our books are distinct projects initiated on the basis of in-depth research and continuous monitoring of the latest scientific studies and advances.InTech selects the authors we would like to collaborate with, and invites them to take part in the project.With the aim of gathering outstanding experts to contribute in the making of influential literature, we apply a rigorous selection process.Only leading experts with a strong publication history and a highly relevant research background are invited to take part in our publications.
After the selection process has been completed, InTech sends invitation emails to inform prospective authors about the book project and propose the collaboration.All contact data are collected from publicly available databases and InTech ensures that all confidentiality agreements are respected.

The Review Process
The book format is different in scope as well as in length to the journal format.Furthermore, the book publishing process has to follow strict publishing deadlines.In order to accommodate these differences, we have developed a strict review process without compromising the quality of our publications.
The conditions for acceptance for publication are: invitation by InTech, the Subject Editor's acceptance of the screened chapter proposals and the Book Editor's acceptance of the reviewed chapter manuscript.
Subject Editors are members of our Editorial Board and, given their scientific expertise in a specific field of research, they are responsible for filtering chapter proposals and sorting them by scope and topic.Book Editors review the chapter proposals and select research papers with a high degree of relevance and a bearing on developments in the field.Book Editors have overall responsibility for the content of the publication, therefore they pay particular attention to originality, research methods, key results, and language.
Only chapter proposals that meet all scientific requirements are accepted.However, definitive acceptance is based on the full chapter review.

The Publishing Process
Authors wishing to have a manuscript published in one of InTech's publications are invited to submit their work electronically only using our Search by ISBN, ISSN, Author, Title Search online Manuscript Tracking System.Full details about format requirements and submission procedures are made available on the Author panel after registration.Authors will be given a password and will be carefully guided through the process of successfully preparing and uploading chapter proposals and papers.
Our publishing process is designed to offer a service that is faster than the traditional publishing process without compromising the quality of the editorial process.The typical publication deadline is eight months and the main steps are: 1. Registration

Chapter proposal submission
Authors are asked to upload an extended chapter proposal.The chapter proposals should be written on 1-4 pages, describing main ideas, key points and research results.The chapter proposals can include images and/or tables, and there is no specific technical requirement.Based on the chapter proposals, the Editorial Board and Book Editors will make an evaluation.

Chapter proposal review
Only chapter proposals that meet all the scientific requirements, or those that need minor corrections only will be provisionally accepted for publication.Definitive acceptance is based on the full chapter review.

Full chapter submission
Authors will have three months after notification to submit full chapter manuscripts.The size of the manuscript must be between 16 and 26 full pages.Authors may only upload MS Word files (.doc, .docx)or zipped LaTeX files, up to 50 Mb in size following the Instructions for Authors.

Full chapter review
Following the submission of full chapters, the Book Editor makes a final quality check.Every effort is made to ensure that manuscripts are reviewed efficiently and to a high standard.Formal notifications of acceptance or rejection will be sent by e-mail, together with the complete review outcome.

Article Processing Charge payment 7. Print proofs and readings
The Technical Editors will prepare the accepted manuscripts for two proof readings.Authors will be asked to check the files for final approval prior to publishing.

Online publication and print
Once the contents have been proof-read and the technical editing is complete, the book is sent to print and is published online.9. Delivery of the hard copy The corresponding author receives one complimentary copy of the publication sent by express delivery.All InTech books are professionally designed and printed on premium quality paper, and are hard bound.

Dissemination
Upon publication, all published chapters are made freely accessible to a wide scientific audience.Apart from our main website, published papers can be accessed on our reading platform InTechOpen, where all papers are freely available to read, print, bookmark, share and download.

The APC
Open Access publishing means that all journals and books are immediately available to the scientific public online for FREE.As an independent publisher, InTech does not employ sources such as subscriptions, sponsorship, advertising or external funding support to ensure sustainability.This is why we ask authors and their funding bodies to pay a publishing fee (formally called the Article Processing Charge).With their contribution and willingness to share their expert knowledge with the scientific community, authors enable the FREE distribution of scholarly literature.
Even though Open Access publishing is free to readers, the publishing process is not cost-free.In addition, all publications are published in hard copy with an ISBN number, which entails additional costs related to the preparation for print, print processing, postal shipment, etc.To express our appreciation for choosing InTech as your publisher, the corresponding author receives one complimentary copy of the publication.
Notice: In order to submit your work as an invited author, you are asked to click the link in your invitation email.You will be carefully guided through all the publishing steps.
Fig. 3.A schematic illustration of image.
were carried out an experimental study in a non-recirculating tilting rectangular flume of 0.61 m width, 0.60 m height and 35 m length.The sidewalls of the flume were made of glass, making it possible to observe and record the flow characteristics.It also made possible flow visualisation during the experimental tests.The bed of the flume was covered by sand particles of 2 mm nominal diameter.Construction of the flume enabled experimentation with different bed roughness and under different flow conditions.

Fig. 4 .
Fig. 4. Two sequence of images with their difference.

Fig. 6 .
Fig. 6.Cross correlation of instantaneous shear stress in sweep event and entrained particles (after Keshavarzi and Ball, 1999) Nabavi (2005) and Keshavarzi et al. (2010) carried out some experimental tests over symmetrical sinusoidal ripple bed form.A photo of symmetrical sinusoidal ripple bed form

Fig. 7 .
Fig. 7.A photo of the ripples Jafari Mianaei and Keshavarzi (2009) used a ADV and CCD camera to record the entrained and deposited sediment particles with instantaneous velocity in 3 dimensions over the

Fig. 8 .
Fig.8.A schematic of the ripple dimensions considered in the study byKeshavarzi et al. (2010)

Table 1 .
Stochastic Nature of Flow Turbulence and Sediment Particle Entrainment over the Ripples at the Bed of Open Channel Using Image Processing Technique Contribution probability of the events in quadrant I, II, III and IV based on twodimensional bursting processes over ripples for experiment (a)

Table 2 .
Contribution probability of the events in quadrant I, II, II and IV based on twodimensional bursting processes over ripples for experiment (b)

Table 4 .
Ratio of deposited particles to entrained particles for run (a)

Table 5 .
Ratio of deposited particles to entrained particles for run(b)