PROCESSES OF TRANSPORT AND SEDIMENTARY

STRUCTURES
• MADE BY:
• CARLOS DANIEL GÓMEZ ZULUAGA
• DAVID ESTEBAN OCHOA GARCÍA

• UNIVERSIDAD DE ANTIOQUIA
• PROGRAMA: INGENIERÍA
OCEANOGRÁFICA
PROCESSES OF TRANSPORT AND
SEDIMENTARY STRUCTURES
 TRANSPORT MEDIA

Gravity Air

Water

Dense sediment
Ice and wáter mixture
GRAVITY
AIR
WATER
ICE
DENSE SEDIMENT AND WÁTER MIXTURE
BEHAVIOUR OF FLUIDS AND PARTICLES IN FLUID

Laminar flow Turbulent flow

 REYNOLDS NUMBER

This is a dimensionless quantity

that indicates the extent to
wihich a flow is laminar o
turbulent
Re< 500 laminar Flow
Re>2000 Turbulent flow
TRANSPORT OF PARTICLES IN A FLUID

Rolling: the clasts move by rolling along at the

bottom of the air or water flow without losing
contact with the bed surface.

Saltation: the particles move in a series of jumps,

periodically leaving the bed surface, and carried
short distances within the body of the fluid before
returning to the bed again.

Suspension: turbulence within the flow

produces sufficient upward motion to keep
particles in the moving fluid more-or-less
continually
 ENTRAINING PARTICLES IN A FLOW

Rolling grains are moved as a result of frictional drag between the flow and the clasts. however, to
make grains saltate and therefore temporarily move upwards from the base of the flow a further
force is required. this force is provided by the Bernoulli effect.
 BERNOULLI EQUATION

ASSUMES NO LOSS Pressure energy

OF ENERGY (ecreased)

Potential energy (cte) Kinetic energy

(increase)

ASSUMES LOSS OF
ENERGY

The reduction in pressure provies a

temporary lift forcé that moves te
clast off the bottom of the Flow.
 GRAIN SIZE AND FLOW VELOCITY

The lift force resulting from the The rag force resulting from the
Bernoulli effect causes grains to be frictional rag between the Flow an
move up from the base of the flow the clasts.
 HJULSTROM DIAGRAM
• shows the relationships between water flow velocity an grain size.
 CLAST-SIZE VARIATIONS: GRADED BEDDING

Normal grading Reverse grading

show a pattern of Show a pattern of

an overall decrease increase in average
in grain size from size from base to
base to top. top.

• turbidity current deposits.

• storms on continental shelves.
fining-upward coarsening-upward
 FLUID DENSITY AND PARTICLE SIZE

Ley de stokes

A clast falling through air will travel faster than if it was

falling through water because the density contrast between
particle and fluid is greater and the fluid viscosity is lower.
Furthermore, higher viscosity fluids exert greater drag and
lift forces for a given flow velocity.
 FLOWS, SEDIMENT AND BEDFORMS

• A bedform is a morphological • Recognition of sedimentary structures

feature formed by the generated by bedforms provides information
interaction between a flow and about the strength of the current, the flow
cohesionless sediment on a bed. depth and the direction of sediment
transport.
 FLOWS, SEDIMENT AND BEDFORMS
hydraulically smooth

• A fluid flowing over a surface can be divided

into a free stream, which is the portion of the
flow unaffected by boundary effects, a
boundary layer, within which the velocity
starts to decrease due to friction with the
bed, and a viscous sublayer, a region of
reduced turbulence that is typically less than
a millimetre thick.

hydraulically rough.
 CURRENTS RIPPLES
• are small bedforms formed by the effects of
boundary layer separation on a bed of
sand, The small cluster of grains grows to
form the crest of a ripple and separation
occurs near this point. Sand grains roll or
saltate up to the crest on the upstream stoss
side of the ripple.
 CURRENTS RIPPLES

• THEY CAN BE DESCRIBED

• Straight crests
BASED ON THE SHAPE OF
THEIR RIDGES
• Wavy crests
• Discontinuous crests
 CURRENT RIPPLES AND CROSS-LAMINATION

• CROSS-LAMINATION: the sand that avalanches

on the lee slope during this migration forms
a series of layers at the angle of the slope.
these thin, inclined layers of sand are
called cross-laminae, which build up to form
the sedimentary structure referred to as
cross-lamination.
planar Cross-lamination Tabular
 CONSTRAINTS ON CURRENT RIPPLE FORMATION

They only form in sands in which the dominant grain size is less than 0.6
mm (coarse sand grade) because bed roughness created by coarser
sand creates turbulent mixing, which inhibits the smallscale flow
separation required for ripple formation.
FORMATION OF WAVES RIPPLES
The formation of wave ripples in
sediment is produced by
oscillatory motion in the water
column due to wave ripples on
the surface of the water. Note
that there is no overall lateral
movement of the water, or of the
sediment. In deep water the
internal friction reduces the
oscillation and wave ripples do
not form in the sediment.
 DUNES

• Beds of sand in rivers, estuaries,

beaches and marine environments
also have bedforms that are
distinctly larger than ripples.
 FORMATION OF THE DUNES
• The formation of dunes also requires flow to be
sustained for long enough for the structure to
build up, and to form cross-bedding the dune
must migrate. Dunescale cross-bedding
therefore cannot be generated by short-lived
flow events. Dunes are most commonly
encountered in river channels, deltas, estuaries
and shallow marine environments where there
are relatively strong, sustained flows.
 BARFORMS

Bars are bedforms occurring within

channels that are of a larger scale
than dunes: they have width and
height dimensions of the same order
of magnitude as the channel within
which they are formed
 PLANE BEDDING AND PLANAR LAMINATION

Horizontal layering in sands deposited

from a flow is referred to as plane
bedding in sediments and produces a
sedimentary structure called planar
lamination in sedimentary rocks.
 SUPERCRITICAL FLOW
Fr>1 supercritical flow
Fr=1 critical flow
• Flow may be considered to be subcritical, Fr<1 subcritical flow
often with a smooth water surface, or
supercritical, with an uneven surface of
wave crests and troughs. These flow states
relate to a parameter, the Froude number
(Fr), which is a relationship between the flow
velocity (y) and the flow depth (h), with ‘g’
the acceleration due to gravity:
BEDFORM STABILITY DIAGRAM

The relationship between the grain

size of the sediment and the flow
velocity. This bedform stability
diagram indicates the bedform that
will occur for a given grain size and
velocity and has been constructed
from experimental data
DISTINGUISHING WAVE AND CURRENT RIPPLES
 TURBIDITY CURRENTS

Deposit turbidites

• Turbulent flow
• Disminution in the velocity currentsv
• Disminution density
 MASS FLOWS

Mixtures of detritus and fluid that

move under gravity are known
collectively as mass flows, gravity
flows or density currents
LOW- AND MEDIUM-DENSITY TURBIDITY CURRENTS

Te

Td

Tc

Tb

Ta
 HIGH-DENSITY TURBIDITY CURRENTS

Under conditions where there is a

higher density of material in the
mixture the processes in the flow and
hence of the characteristics of the
deposit are different from those
described above. High-density
turbidity currents have a bulk density
of at least 1.1 g cm3
 MASS FLOWS
Mixtures of detritus and fluid that move under gravity are known
collectively as mass flows, gravity flows or density currents

Debris flows are dense, viscous mixtures of sediment

and water in which the volume and mass of sediment
exceeds that of water (Major 2003). A dense, viscous
mixture of this sort will typically have a low Reynolds
number so the flow is likely to be laminar. The deposits of
debris flows on land are typically matrix-supported
conglomerates although clast-supported deposits also
occur if the relative proportion of large clasts is high in the
sediment mixture.
 GRAIN FLOWS

• Avalanches are mechanisms of mass transport down a steep slope, which are also
known as grain flows. particles in a grain flow are kept apart in the fluid medium
by repeated grain to grain collisions and grain flows rapidly ‘freeze’ as soon as
the kinetic energy of the particles falls below a critical value.
 MUDCRAKS

• Clay-rich sediment is cohesive and the

individual particles tend to stick to each
other as the sediment driesout. As water is
lost the volume reduces and clusters of clay
minerals pull apart developing cracks in the
surface. Under subaerial conditions a
polygonal pattern of cracks develops when
muddy sediment dries out completely: these
are desiccation cracks.
• syneresis cracks are shrinkage cracks that form
under water in clayey sediments (tanner 2003).
as the clay layer settles and compacts it shrinks
to form single cracks in the surface of the mud. in
contrast to desiccation cracks, syneresis cracks
are not polygonal but are simple, straight or
slightly curved tapering cracks.
• Neither desiccation cracks nor syneresis cracks
form in silt or sand because these coarser
materials are not cohesive
 EROSIONAL SEDIMENTARY
STRUCTURES
• A turbulent flow over the surface of sediment that has
recently been deposited can result in the partial and
localized removal of sediment. scouring may form a
channel which confines the flow, most commonly seen on
land as rivers.
 EROSIONAL SEDIMENTARY STRUCTURES
Alineación primaria
Marcas de resaca
Scour marks Marcas tipo flautas (Flute marks)
Estructuras de corte y relleno
Marcas de arroyo (rill marks):
• CURRENT MARKS
Estacionary (Crescient marks)

Tools marks
Groove marks
Moviment
(surco)
Chevron marks
• Small-scale erosional features on a bed surface are referred to as sole marks.
sole marks may be divided into those that form as a result of turbulence in the
water causing erosion (scour marks) and impressions formed by objects carried in
the water flow (tool marks) (allen 1982)
• Small-scale erosional features on a bed surface are referred to as sole marks.
sole marks may be divided into those that form as a result of turbulence in the
water causing erosion (scour marks) and impressions formed by objects carried in
the water flow (tool marks) (allen 1982)
 TERMINOLOGY FOR SEDIMENTARY
STRUCTURES AND BEDS
• When describing layers of sedimentary rock it is useful to indicate how thick the
beds are, and this can be done by simply stating the measurements in millimetres,
centimetres or metres. In an attempt to standardize this terminology, there is a
generally agreed set of ‘definitions’ for bed thickness
 • in common with many other fields of geology, there is some variation in the use of
the terminology to describe bedforms and sedimentary structures.

If the bedform is a ripple the

Cross-stratification is any
layering in a sediment or
sedimentary rock that is
oriented at an angle to the
depositional horizontal.
Migration of dune bedforms
produces cross-bedding, which
may be tens of centimetres to
tens of metres in thickness.
resulting structure is referred to
as cross-lamination. Ripples are
limited in crest height to about
30 mm so cross laminated beds
do not exceed this thickness.
• a single unit of cross-laminated,
cross-bedded or cross-stratified
sediment is referred to as a bed-
set. where a bed contains more
than one set of the same type of
structure, the stack of sets is called
a co-set.
Flaser bedding is characterised by isolated thin drapes of mud
amongst the cross-laminae of a sand.
Lenticular bedding is composed of isolated ripples of sand
completely surrounded by mud, and intermediate forms made up
of approximately equal proportions of sand and mud are called
wavy bedding (Reineck & Singh 1980).
FINISHED.

THANKS.