Experimental Studies of Self-Cleansing Drainage System Design: A Review

Abstract

Self-cleansing is a design criterion for drainage systems that mitigates the continuous deposition of sediments at the channel bottom. In recent decades, in order to improve the knowledge for determination of self-cleansing conditions applicable for drainage system design, laboratory experimental studies on sediment transport in rigid-boundary channels have been conducted. In this study, according to the definition of self-cleansing, the main studies in the literature are classified and projections for future studies are drawn. This review is limited to laboratory experimental studies that used noncohesive sediments. A brief comparison of existing equations are presented and discussed. It is found that a major discrepancy exists among performances and applicability of existing self-cleansing models from a variety of data sources. This fact can be attributed to the subjective definition of different sediment-transport conditions, channel cross-sectional shape, range of experimental data, and parameters used for the model development. It is expected that this review will be helpful for researchers looking for an integrated and classified literature review on sediment-transport studies in rigid-boundary channels and drainage systems.