Inception of channelization over a non-flat bed. (Q5950169)

The paper deals with the upstream-driven theory for inception of channelization in the case of non-flat bed. St.-Venant steady equations of shallow water, written in terms of streamwise momentum, transverse momentum and mass balance, are integrated using a linear perturbative analysis in order to obtain the variation of the finite wavelength corresponding to the separation distance between incipient basins on the bed curvature. The analysis indicates that even for small values of the bed curvature there is a great change in the characteristic wavelength with respect to the flat bed.