LEGI develops the Acoustic Concentration & Velocity Profiler technology (Thorne and Hurther 2014, Thorne et al. 2018, Fromant et al. 2018) based on rigid and elastic particle scattering theory for measuring sediment size and concentration profile inside both the turbulence driven dilute suspension layer and the dense bedload layer controlled by particle-particle interactions. At the same time, pulse coherent Doppler methods are implemented for co-located and simultaneous multi-component velocity profiling at rates resolving small turbulent flow scales. This enables particle flux measurements in different types of current and / or wave driven geophysical flows. Over the past ten years, fundamental problems of sediment transport physics could be addressed and elucidated with this advanced High-Resolution measurement performance including a major technological innovation and knowledge transfer towards the industrial sector. In parallel, an open-source software tool named HYDRAC is currently under development under Python 3 to facilitate operational monitoring of sediment concentration with wide variety of existing hydroacoustic instrumentation (including commercial systems such as ADCP, ABS, ADV, UVP,...).
Funding :
ANR Astrid MESURE (DGA, 2017-2020) : D. Hurther-Coordinator
Hydralab+ COMPLEX (H2020 EC Funding) : D. Hurther-Principal Investigator
PhD Student and Post-doc
G. Fromant (Post-doc, 2017-2019)
Fromant, G., Mieras, R. S., Revil-Baudard, T., Puleo, J. A., Hurther, D., & Chauchat, J. (2018). On Bedload and Suspended Load Measurement Performances in Sheet Flows Using Acoustic and Conductivity Profilers. Journal of Geophysical Research : Earth Surface, 123(10), 2546–2562. <10.1029/2017JF004560>
Thorne, P. D., Hurther, D., Cooke, R., Caceres, I., Barraud, P. - A., & Sánchez-Arcilla, A. (2018). Developments in acoustics for studying wave-driven boundary layer flow and sediment dynamics over rippled sand-beds. Continental Shelf Research, 166, 119–137. <10.1016/j.csr.2018.07.008>
Thorne, P. D., and Hurther, D. (2014). An overview on the use of backscattered sound for measuring suspended particle size and concentration profiles in non-cohesive inorganic sediment transport studies. Continental Shelf Research, 73, 97–118.