Critical shear stress for mass erosion of organic-rich fine sediments

In shallow lakes of Florida laden with low-strength organic-rich sediments, wind-induced water movement is believed to actuate bed surface erosion as well as mass erosion. Experiments in hydraulic flumes to measure the critical shear stress for mass erosion tend to be lengthy and require large quantities of sediment. For bottom sediment from Lake Okeechobee at naturally occurring values of the floc volume fraction, a comparison of the viscoplastic yield stress, readily obtained from rheometry, with the mass erosion critical stress from flume tests indicates that it may be permissible to consider the yield stress as a surrogate for the critical stress. This inference appears to be supported by ancillary observations from Lake Apopka and Newnans Lake. Interestingly enough, the variation of yield stress with the floc volume fraction of the organic-rich bed is found to conform to fractal characterization commonly invoked for mineral sediment flocs, consistent with a representative constant value of 2.55 of the fractal dimension. Pending fuller investigations with a wide range of organic-rich sediments, recourse to rheometry in lieu of flume experiments holds promise as a means to simplify testing requirements for estimating the mass erosion critical stress.