Utilização de Velocímetro Acústico Doppler (ADV) para avaliação da concentração de sedimentos em suspensão

Abstract

The main objective of this work was evaluating the possibility of using the Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter (ADV) to quantify the suspended sediment concentration (SSC). For this purpose, a laboratory experiment was developed, where a controlled environment was sought to test the ADV response for tests conducted in samples with known characteristics. Eight concentrations and five particles sizes of five types from soil types of three cities were used in the test. An experimental apparatus was built in order to obtain data in homogeneous water and soil samples utilizing the Sontek Horizon ADV software. Samples were collected in six different positions, 6cm, 12cm and 18cm from the bottom of the vessel, totalizing more than 600 sampling. The software Win ADV was utilized to visualize the data and the post processing, applying the PSTM filter to eliminate data that were affected by noise effects, maintaining a large percentage of data. The collected data showed an increase of SNR compared to the increase of SSC for the different soil types for the five particle sizes, wherein the best correlations between echo and SSC occurred for the tests with soils 2,3 and 4. By the measurements with ADV in laboratory, was possible to investigate the relation signal/noise for different particle sizes and SSC of soil when soil is suspended in water. It was noted that the found SNR values did not follow a pattern in relation to soil particle size. In other words, it cannot be concluded that the increase of particle size results in increase of SNR, whereas the SNR values found were larger for some particle sizes in some concentrations and smaller in others. In relation to SSC, it is easy to note that, in general, the higher the concentration of sediments, higher is the found SNR value. This result meets with what have been seen in the literature.