Comparison of methods for estimating shear stress distribution in width of open channels

The shear stress is used in many of sediment transport equations, turbulence models, identification of stable river reaches, river bed and bank erosion, and river morphology studies. Furthermore, shear stress distribution along river bed and banks is essential for forecasting changes of river geometry. Unfortunately, in spite of great importance of shear stress, direct measurement of this parameter in the rivers is very difficult, especially during flood, hence researchers have proposed indirect methods to calculate the shear stress. In this study, three methods have been used for predicting lateral distribution of boundary shear stress in open channels, and their results were compared with experimental data in the cases of simple and compound channels. The results show that the quasi–two dimensional model of Shiono and Knight (SKM) by considering the secondary flow effect is more accurate than the merged perpendicular method (MPM) and vertical depth method (VDM). The average relative errors of the SKM, MPM and VDM for prediction of the shear stress in laboratory simple and compound channels are calculated as 8, 14 and 18 percent, respectively.