Alternative tile intake design for intensively managed agro-ecosystems

The overarching objective of this study is to assess the effectiveness and performance of ATIs. In doing so, this research provides a fundamental understanding of the flow and sediment propagation through a different combination of porous media (pea gravel and woodchips). The research hypothesizes that the theory of advection and diffusion describes the migration of flow and identifies a myriad of depositional networks of sediment. A key hypothesis of the study is that global and local pressure differentiation affects the flow pathways and distribution with intimate effects of sediment trapping efficiency and distribution within the permeameter. A significant goal of this study is to decompose the key mechanisms that affect this migration of sediment under a fixed value for the head and incoming concentration. The nature of the study is experimental and is supported by limited numerical and field analysis. Although the experimental setup is site specific to the conditions encountered in the study location, it offers a generic way of examining flow and sediment intrusion within a permeable bed. The study in that sense hypothesizes that the intrusion by Einstein is valid and it shows the change in the hydraulic gradient that occurs during an event and during a sequence of events. A secondary goal of this research is to understand the cyclicity in the migration of sediment in a sequence of different events, where the initial conditions of each run constitutes the outcome of the final result of the previous runs. The nature of those experiments is to mimic the occurrence of sequential events in nature, although the continuous examined in the laboratory as reflective of conditions representing extreme runs. This research also treats the hydraulic conductivity as a dynamic entity to reflect the effect of localized clogging on the propagation of flow. The experimental design of this research considers a series of experimental runs to address the aforementioned objectives of this research and test the posed hypothesis.