LAUSR

Purpose Sediment transport plays a vital role in the development of soil erosion process models. The primary purpose of this study is to establish new sediment transport capacity formulas and evaluate their applicability to sediment. Materials and methods In this study, we collected three different soil types from Loess Plateau. Simulated sediment transport experiments were carried out in indoor flumes with energy gradients ranging from 6.9 to 20.8% and unit flow discharge rates ranging from 0.00014 to 0.00111 m 2  s −1 . Results and discussion We found an exponential relationship between sediment transport capacity, energy gradients, and unit flow discharge rates. The sediment transport capacity increased with increasing energy gradient and unit flow discharge, and the unit flow discharge had a more significant influence on sediment transport capacity compared with energy gradient. We used each composite force predictor and measured the sediment transport capacity according to the nondimensional principle, and the resulting data corresponded to different soils distributed in zones, as sediment transport capacity is controlled by a critical starting condition. After including soil clay particle content and volume sediment content in our formula, we were able to derive an accurate equation for calculating sediment transport. Conclusions Among the dimensionless composite force predictors, the dimensionless effective stream power was the most reliable predictor. The sediment transport capacity and effective stream power were related exponentially ( R 2  = 0.953).