Download or read book Ultrasonic Measurement of Suspended Sediment written by Gordon H Flammer and published by . This book was released on 2017-02-10 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A basis phase of the modern scientific revolution has been the advance in measurement techniques, particularly during the past decade or two. The adaptation of electronics to instrumentation has revolutionized many types of measurements, and continued development holds great promise for the future. Such factors as sensitivity of measurement, accuracy, and relative ease of recording are all significant advantages of electronic methods. One of the most serious limitations in studying the mechanics of sediment movement in a flowing stream has been the lack of adequate measuring instruments. Present methods take only intermittent samples, and the analysis of these samples is laborious and time consuming. As measurement technique improves, the rate of progress in the discovery of the basic principles of sediment-motion mechanics will increase accordingly. In an attempt to improve the quality and to reduce the cost of records of sediment discharge in streams, the Federal Inter-Agency Sedimentation Project at Minneapolis, Minn. was assigned the tasks of improving sampling methods and equipment and of developing automatic devices for determining sediment concentration and discharge. The immediate objective was to develop an automatic instrument for obtaining, either periodically or continuously, the suspended-sediment concentration at one point in the cross section of a stream. Measuring the attenuations of an ultrasonic beam seemed to be a possible way to determine the concentration of sediment in suspension.