3.1. Velocity Distribution
As showed in
Figure 3, the stream-wise velocity (x direction) profiles are displayed for all experimental runs. At each measurement point, by respectively dividing the maximum flow velocity (u
c) of each profile and the total flow depth (H), the flow velocity and distance from the bed (z) at this point are converted into dimensionless velocity (u/u
c) and flow depth (z/H), respectively. For flow with a low aspect ratio (flume width/flow depth < 5), the location of the maximum velocity may fluctuate due to the influence of secondary currents. However, with a greater aspect ratio (more than 5), this effect is hardly noticeable [
22]. If the aspect ratio is less than 5 and the dip phenomena occurs, as reported in the previous studies, the flow will be three-dimensional [
25,
27]. Neither negative velocities nor flow separation at the bed of both entrance and exit section of pools could be recorded because of the limitations of the ADV. The relative velocity profiles for flow in pools with different slopes are very similar, as showed in
Figure 3. Yet, velocities of flow in the pool with a slope of 10-degrees are slower than those with a slope of 5-degrees. In a decelerating flow, the near-bed velocities are lower than those at water surface, and this discrepancy increases in the streamwise direction. This outcome agree with that reported by other researchers [
28].
The effect of decelerating flow is still present in the pool's middle section, preventing a uniform flow from developing. In the accelerating flow, velocity increases near the bed and drops near the water surface as flow continues along the exit section. This flow pattern confirms the results of other researchers [
6,
29]. Unlike a vegetated stream, a stream with a gravel bed generates more mixing flow all over the bed, resulting in the decrease in velocity, which makes flow separation more likely. Despite the aspect ratios is less than 5, no evident for the velocity dip phenomenon is observed within the range of flow depth of z/h < 0.6. Nevertheless, the highest flow velocity has been observed below the water surface at a flow depth of z/H > 0.6 along the decelerating flow section when the entrance slope is 5 degree (
Figure 3). As the flow enters the pool region, the maximum flow velocity moves toward the water surface in the zone of flow depth of z/h > 0.8. This finding agrees well with reported result that the dip phenomenon occurs at a distance up to 0.67H (or dip parameter) from the bed for uniform flow with a hydraulic rough bed[
26]. According to some earlier studies, the value of the dip parameter for non-uniform flows is 0.22H [
25]. In a gravel bed river with flexible submerged vegetation patches and 3D bed-forms, this value is up to 0.8H [
30]. However, the findings of theoretical investigations based on the Navier-Stokes equations demonstrate that the value of the dip parameter in the accelerating flows is higher than that in both uniform and decelerating flows [
31].
In this study, in the zone above the vegetated canopy up to the depth of z/H < 0.1 in the pool, the velocity fluctuation is dominantly dependent on the drag force caused by the vegetation, and the viscous shear stress has only a minor impact on the velocity profile, leading to minimal changes in the velocity profile in this region. The velocity profile in the upper layer of the flow (z/H > 0.1) increased gradually with the flow depth (z/H). By increasing the aspect ratio, the presence of vegetation canopy inside the pool can result in the "S" shaped distribution profiles of velocity. This is true for both the pool entry and exit sections with a slope of 10 degrees (decreasing the water depth from 20 cm to 15 cm). In fact, the velocity gradient in the upper layer of the flow approaches null; the velocity gradient reaches the maximum in the middle and close to the bed, and the velocity distribution follows the logarithmic function. This outcome supports the findings of prior research [
25]. Moreover, contrary to what was found in earlier research, the dimensionless flow velocities in the outer zone of the decelerating flow section (z/h > 0.2) are not necessarily higher than those in the accelerating flow section [
23,
32,
33]. To further assess the impacts of secondary currents on the characteristics of flow in pool with presence of vegetation, flow velocity components in other two directions (span-wise
v, and vertical direction
w) are shown for four experimental runs in
Figure 4.
The presence of both positive and negative values of velocity profiles in both span-wise and vertical directions indicates the pattern of secondary currents [
23,
25]. While the average vertical velocity is negative in the decelerating and middle sections of the pool reveals the occurrence of downward flow, the positive values of vertical velocities in the accelerating section indicate the inclination of flow toward the water surface. The opposing effect of accelerating and decelerating stream portions on secondary currents along the pool bed has been noted by a number of researchers, which lead the flow convergence in the entrance slope and flow divergence in the exit slope section of the flow [
23,
29]. Despite the fact that in a balanced flow, it is not always the case that the vertical velocity is downward in an accelerating flow, and upward in a decelerating flow [
32].The convergence and divergence pattern of flow in the deceleration and acceleration sections is in agreement with field investigations and experimental studies [
8,
34,
35,
36].
3.2. Reynolds Normal and Shear Stress Distributions
In this study, using the following Equations 1, the dimensional Reynolds normal stresses have been estimated at three locations (entrance, middle, and exit sections) along the pool bed, which depicted in
Figure 5.
Under a constant flow discharge, the normal stresses on the pool bed with vegetation patch are clearly greater than those on the bear gravel-surface. The magnitude of normal stress decreases as the flow rate rises. Also, the magnitude of normal stress decreases as the bed slope angle rises. Additionally, when aspect ratio rises, the magnitude of normal stress becomes small at the water surface. This phenomenon happens due to a stronger secondary current in shallower flows (w/h = 2.7). For experimental Runs 5 to 8 conducted using experiment setup 2 (10-degrees slope), the magnitudes of normal stresses in three directions of the flow are showed in
Figure 6. Results indicate that the levels of normal stress are higher in stream-wise direction than those in both lateral and vertical directions. However, the magnitude of stream-wise normal stresses were disturbed in three directions, due to the presence of secondary currents resulted in different roughness between the bed and the banks. Therefore, the Reynolds normal stress distributions are affected by the difference of roughness (gravel or vegetation) and bedform slopes. This makes difficult to provide a general pattern for the distribution of Reynolds normal stress in the bedforms in the present of vegetation cover.
In
Figure 7, Reynolds Shear Stresses(
) showed in Eq. 2 are normalized with the squared friction velocity
, in which
is shear velocity calculated from the velocity profiles near the bed, follow the logarithmic law showed in Eq. 3. Wherein k is the von Karman coefficient, which is equal to 0.41,
is the reference bed level varies with the roughness height of the bed material. In both uniform and non-uniform flows, it has been claimed that the inner zone of each velocity can be extended to a relative depth of z/
= 0.2 [
32].
In the presence of vegetation canopy in the pool bed, four experimental runs have been conducted. The dimensionless Reynolds Shear Stress (RSS) profiles are displayed in
Figure 7 along the flow depth. If the channel bed is smooth, the RSS distribution is often linear. The rough sub-layer near to the bed may cause the Reynolds stress distribution to grow up to 20% of the flow depth before decreasing [
37]. Results of present study indicate that the secondary currents are intensified due to the presence of the vegetation canopy, the non-zero vertical velocities, and the smaller values of aspect ratio less than 5. Several researches have demonstrated that the secondary currents in shallow flows cause the shear stress distribution to deviate from the expected linear shape [
29,
38,
39]. The RSS has been investigated and showed in
Figure 7 for the case when vegetation is present in the pool bed. In order to demonstrate the various trends of Reynolds stress under different experimental settings, results of four experimental runs have been prersented in
Figure 7. Depending on the variation in the flow velocities, location of the maximum shear stress can be observed in the upstream portion of the channel, which is located in the zone close to the channel bed within the distance of z/H < 0.15, reveals that the RSS values completely be affected by the roughness elements and relative submergence (H/
) [
40]. The positive RSS values close to water surface supports the existence of the dip phenomenon. The greater the slope of the pool entrance section (Runs 6, and 7) is, the higher the Reynolds stress values are induced along the flow. Also, the shear stress reduced toward the water's surface as the flow depth increased, and its distribution profile appears a convex shape. Moreover, the positive pressure gradient (also known as the reverse pressure gradient) and the negative pressure gradient (also known as the favorable pressure gradient), have an impact on the Reynolds stress distribution in the decelerating and accelerating flows, respectively[
21]. The shear stress profiles in the middle pool section do not exhibit a tendency toward a linear shape, suggesting that the flow is not homogeneous there. In the presence of a vegetation patch in the pool, the increased flow velocity lead to the increease in the shear stress values in the zone of z/H < 0.2 due to higher turbulence intensities. For all experimental runs, the maximum shear stress inside the middle pool section occurred away from the channel bed depending on the flow velocity and slopes of entrance and exit sections, specifically the maximum RSS is observed at the depth of z/H = 0.25 in the middle part of the flow (Run 3, 4, and 6) [
21,
23,
29]. However, the impact of secondary currents resulted from the increase in the aspect ratio has the opposite effect on the location of the maximum shear stress and is shifted toward the water surface (Run 7). For the same flow discharge, as the results showed from Runs 3 and 6, with the increase in the slope of the entrance section (namely, with the decrease in flow velocities), the RSS values increased in the zone of z/H < 0.5 (except for the middle pool section).
Due to significant disturbances resulted from bed forms and roughness, the shape of shear stress distribution profiles in the downstream section of the pool differs from that in the upstream section of the pool. Negative Reynolds stresses are also observed sometimes, as illustrated in
Figure 7. Most likely, this is resulted from the flow being transmitted to each component's wake zone by vegetation-induced drag. Nonetheless, the previous investigations in the presence of vegetation and bed morphologies also reported the existence of negative RSS values [
41]. These results demonstrated that, even if the sweep and ejection events result in positive RSS values in the flow field, the outward and inward events in the bursting process might be responsible for the negative stresses.
In some places, particularly in the zones that the flow was accelerating, the RSS value increased dramatically. It may be explained that when the flow is accelerated or even the channel bed has a larger slope, the turbulent velocity components undergo some changes, as indicated in
Figure 7 and
Figure 8. Moreover, the distribution of flow responds more strongly and more quickly to the changes in bed slope near the channel's side walls than it does near the channel's centerline (
Figure 8). It has been observed from
Figure 9 that, over the garvel pool bed, the highest Reynolds stress region grows to the end of the middle section of the pool. However, with a lower flow discharge, the presence of vegetation resulted in an obvious decrease in the shear stress (Run 3). While, with the higher flow discharge, the vegetated canopy minimizes shear stresses on the entrance slope, the zone with the greatest stress is only visible in the middle section of the pool bed (Run 4).
3.3. Turbulence Kinetic Energy (TKE)
As seen in Fig.3 the velocity profile in the inner layer of the flow is almost constant due to the significant wake effects resulted from the vegetation canopy; this zone exhibits negligibly little vertical momentum transmission although it may occasionally appears with a slightly contour-gradient. This inner layer zone is comparable to the "emergent" vegetated open-channel flow studied by previous researchers, which refer to the "longitudinal exchange zone", with a negligibly small vertical momentum transport [
4,
42,
43,
44]. In the mixing layer, due to the vertical transfer of momentum, the unstable inflection-point of velocity is induced by secondary currents. The logarithmic law is used to describe the turbulence structure in this zone.
Figure 10 represents the variation of dissipation rate of turbulent kinetic energy (TKE =
), normalized with the squared friction velocity
, with respect to flow depth in central pool section where vegetation patch presents. In the mixing layer of flow at the canopy part, the turbulent diffusion has an obvious impact on the turbulence kinetic energy (TKE) budget
Figure 10 shows that the great TKE values are observed at different locations in several flow sections. The energy losses are reduced, i.e., as the entrance slope increases, the pressure losses per unit length of the bed are reduced, leading to lower RSS values [
20]. In fact, the mixing eddies resulted from the velocity gradient over the vegetation canopy decreased, and the reduction of the entrance slope of a pool leads to turbulence becomes weaker. The profiles of TKE values do not follow a convex shape, as it is considered for Run 7 due to both large entrance and exit slopes of the bedform, indicating a significant role of bedform geometry on the TKE distribution. In addition, due to stronger secondary currents and higher turbulence velocity, an increase in flow velocity by reducing flow depth resulted in larger TKE values in Run 7.
The maximum TKEvalue is predicted to occur generally in a zone that is relatively close to the bed (z/h < 0.2), since the production of Von Karman vortexes is typically associated with the occurrence of TKE values that peak a severe distortion in the velocity profile [
10]. Moreover, other studies have revealed lower ranges for the wake zone in streams with broad and heavily submerged vegetation as well as in streams with a broad, partially submerged vegetation in bed. Results of the present study support the existence of a small wake zone over the vegetation canopy [
2,
14] only for the small bedform slopes (Runs 3 and 4).
3.4. Turbulence Intensities
By calculating the root mean square (RMS) of flow velocities, turbulence intensity is displayed in
Figure 12 to show the values of intensities for pool setup 1. It has been found that the vertical turbulence intensity is highest in the upper layer above the canopy of vegetation, about in the zone of z/H < 0.2, while stream-wise and lateral turbulence intensities reach their maximum just above the canopy of vegetation.
Research results showed that the maximum intensity of streamwise turbulence (u’) occurs just above the canopy, while the maximum intensity of vertical turbulence occurs rather just below the emergent canopy. Due to the non-uniformity of flow in experiments, the values of u’, in particular, exhibit convex shape rather than a concave one, which deviates from the exponential law proposed by Nezu (1977) [
45]. This suggests that vegetation considerably modifies the equilibrium state of turbulent kinetic energy and thus, the redistribution of turbulence intensities. In fact, it should be noted that the isotropic turbulence inside of vegetation (including the vegetation stems and canopy) occurs when there is a strong wake of turbulence over those objects. As a result, the wake caused by vegetation elements may cause convex patterns of turbulence intensities in a cascade process [
46]. Similar convex-shaped distribution of turbulence intensity has been reported in studies of aquatic canopies [
47,
48].
It appears that the presence of vegetation has a considerable impact on kinetic energy and the distribution of turbulence intensities [
18,
47]. As showed in
Figure 12, results imply that the slope angle of the channel bed may have an impact on the maximum disturbance intensity. The maximum amount of disturbance along the accelerating section of the flow has greater values than that along the decelerating section. The zone of the inner layer with the largest turbulence intensities can be seen around the zone of z/H < 0.2, while in the central region of the flow it appeared to be in the zone of z/H < 0.4. These zones (or flow depths) are also thought to be the spots where shear stress is at its highest. Instead of the accelerating flow, the decelerating flow intensifies the turbulence and increase Reynolds shear stress, indicating that flow structures are affected by the non-uniformity of the flow [
38].
3.5. Skewness Coefficients
Skewness coefficients (
and
) of velocity fluctuations are the third central moment of the factors u’ and w’, which include positive, negative, or zero values in turbulent flows. Asymmetry in a flow field can be better understood by looking at skewness factors [
19]. A positive skewness means that the variable u’ is more likely to take on a large positive value than large negative one. In fact, a non-zero skewness of velocity fluctuations in the stream-wise and vertical directions, indicates an asymmetric probability density function (PDF) of the considered variable, namely, the dominated processes in one direction are more possible than in the other one depending on the symptom of the statistics.
The positive skewness indicates that the PDF (probability density function) has a longer tail for u’ > 0 than that for u’ < 0. A zero-skewness value shows an isotropic or homogenous turbulence. The outward motion of the flow is a result of the positive values of u’ and c in bursting process occurrences, the sweep motion is recognized with the positive value of u’, and negative value w’ generally corresponds to the flow stream over the vegetation canopy (often denotes the flow stream above the vegetation canopy). However, the ejection motion of the bursting phenomenon, which has a positive value for w’ and negative value for u’, along with the sweep motion have been observed over smooth walls in boundary layer [
49,
50]. Lastly, the flow has been recognized to be moving inward if both u’ and w’ have negative values. This organized motion known as the "Monami" was observed by other researchers who examined coherent eddies over aquatic flexible vegetation canopies. The possible explanation is that instability of the inflection-point of velocity profiles is responsible for the generation of Monami coherent eddies in the presence of flexible vegetation in flows. This implies that coherent eddies like ejections and sweeps will resonate with the flexible vegetation [
43].
Figure 13 displays the skewness for measured velocity fluctuations (
and(
) from experiments based on data collected from experimental Runs 3, 6, and 7 along the upstream, entrance slope through the decelerating flow (CDF), middle-pool section, and exit sections which leads to the accelerating flow (CAF) of the pool while maintaining the same flow rate and vegetation canopy. The sweep motion is the major event right above the gravel grains in the zone of z/H < 0.1 in the upstream region of the pool, where the fluctuations of flow velocity mostly depend on two parameters, flow depth (
H), and median grain size of bed material (
)(Runs 3 and 6). To precisely study flow dynamics, data was collected at the boundary of gravel and vegetation patch at the upstream portion of the pool, as showed in
Figure 13C.
One can see from
Figure 13 that
just has slightly positive values at point c together with a positive
value, where vegetation patch begins at the gravel border, implying that the outward motion has occurred closely above the gravel barrier in the zone of z/H < 0.1.
Along the decelerating part of the flow (CDF), sweep motion appears above the vegetation canopy in the inner layer of the flow in the zone of z/H < 0.2, while the modification of the entrance slope doesn’t lead to a change of the zone for the occurrence of the sweep motion in the stream (Runs 3 and 6). However, by adjusting the aspect ratio in the flow (Run 7, from w/H = 2 to 2.7; w/H < 5), sweep phenomenon has been seen in a higher layer of the stream in the zone of z/H < 0.5, indicating that the change of flow velocity results in the occurrences of bursting events. By increasing the slope of the entrance section of the pool, a larger region for the sweep phenomenon is resulted, while a higher sweep zone (z/H < 0.4) has been observed by altering the aspect ratio. The sweep motion has been noticed just above the vegetation canopy in the acceleration section of the flow. However, a larger zone of sweep motion has been generated because of the modification of the slope of the exit section of a pool.
3.7. Spectral Analysis
Spectral analysis has been done for velocity components along the bedform at the same points which are located at 6 mm from the vegetation cover along the entrance slope, middle section, and the exit slope of the pool. The distance of 6 mm from the vegetation cover is selected in this study, since we want to compare results of this study to those of other studies such as Najafabadi et al. (2018)[
51]. Power spectral densities of velocity components in
Figure 15 are presented for three velocity components; stream-wise velocity is presented as blue curves; spanwise velocity components as green curves and vertical velocity components as red curves.
Figure 15 shows a slightly deviation in the Kolmogorov’s -5/3 power law for the vertical velocity component from the inertial sub-range with the presence of a smaller bed slope, but it is generally valid. The slight deviation is resulted from rigid vegetation on the bed that limits its effect to near the vegetation. In addition, the Kolmogorov scale may mainly represent a balance between the kinetic and viscous energy in the flow field, and not necessarily an eddy scale, which could explain this discrepancy in velocity deviation of the Kolmogorov law. Najafabadi et al. (2018) reported that the Kolmogorov’s -5/3 power law is prominent only at the deepest point of bedform. However, our study shows that the law rests universal for the trailing edge of vegetation of 3D bedform as it is reported for 2D pool with 3D flow in a laboratory experiment over the gravel bed[
51].
Figure 15 shows that the shedding frequency falls between 1.8 and 4 Hz. However, Nepf (1999) claimed that this range for is (1.8 - 3.6 Hz) for a random of cylinder as emergent vegetation [
52], but (1.0 – 1.8 Hz) reported by Lacy and Roy (2007)[
53]. Over the gravel bed between the vegetation patches, Afzalimehr et al. (2021) pointed out this range is from 3.0 to 7.7 Hz) [
54].This comparison shows that the shedding frequency is affected by the changes in bedform slope as well as the presence of 3D bedforms and vegetation patches, revealing higher values than those reported in literature.