Modeling Suspended Solids and Bacteria in Ford Lake

Abstract

A submodel for computing the behavior of suspended solids and associated pollutants in turbulent, open channels was constructed and tested in a natural water system. The submodel equation was the two-dimensional equation for suspended particles in a turbulent flowing medium. A procedure was developed to determine particle fall velocity distributions and a bottom boundary condition calibrated to three sets of flume data. A numerical solution was obtained and expressed in graphical form as a function of particle fall velocity, channel shear velocity, and channel depth. The submodel was successfully tested in the Ford Lake, Michigan, system with fecal coliform bacteria as the associated pollutant.