Capillary trapping of buoyant particles within regions of emergent vegetation
Name
WRR-Capillary trapping.pdf
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510.9 KB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
140509785ae46c1f8fad8e459abebed2
Author(s)
Peruzzo, Paolo
Defina, Andrea
Nepf, Heidi
Date Issued
July 2012
Journal
Water Resources Research
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Citation
Peruzzo, P., A. Defina, and H. Nepf (2012), Capillary trapping of buoyant particles within regions of emergent vegetation, Water Resour. Res., 48, W07512, doi:10.1029/2012WR011944.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The seeds of many aquatic plants are buoyant and thus transported at the water surface, where they are subject to surface tension that may enhance their retention within emergent vegetation. Specifically, seeds may be trapped by surface tension (i.e., by the Cheerios effect) at the surface-piercing interface of the vegetation. In this work we develop a physical model that predicts this mechanism of seed trapping, advancing the model proposed by Defina and Peruzzo (2010) that describes the propagation of floating particles through emergent vegetation. The emergent vegetation is simulated as an array of cylinders, randomly arranged, with the mean gap between cylinders far greater than the particle size, which prevents the trapping of particles between pairs of cylinders, referred to as net trapping. Laboratory experiments are used to guide and validate the model. The model also has good agreement with experimental data available in the literature for real seeds and more complex plant morphology.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1029/2012WR011944
