Sedimentary rocks are types of rock that are formed by the accumulation or deposition of mineral or organic particles at Earth's surface, followed by cementation. Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause these particles to settle in place. The particles that form a sedimentary rock are called sediment, and may be composed of geological detritus (minerals) or biological detritus. The geological detritus originated from weathering and erosion of existing rocks, or from the solidification of molten lava blobs erupted by volcanoes. The geological detritus is transported to the place of deposition by water, wind, ice or mass movement, which are called agents of denudation. Biological detritus was formed by bodies and parts of dead aquatic organisms, as well as their fecal mass, suspended in water and slowly piling up on the floor of water bodies. Sedimentation may also occur as dissolved minerals precipitate from water solution.
Settling is the process by which particulates move towards the bottom of a liquid and form a sediment. Particles that experience a force, either due to gravity or due to centrifugal motion will tend to move in a uniform manner in the direction exerted by that force. For gravity settling, this means that the particles will tend to fall to the bottom of the vessel, forming sludge or slurry at the vessel base. Settling is an important operation in many applications, such as mining, wastewater and drinking water treatment, biological science, space propellant reignition, and scooping.
In chemistry, a suspension is a heterogeneous mixture of a fluid that contains solid particles sufficiently large for sedimentation. The particles may be visible to the naked eye, usually must be larger than one micrometer, and will eventually settle, although the mixture is only classified as a suspension when and while the particles have not settled out.
Deposition is the geological process in which sediments, soil and rocks are added to a landform or landmass. Wind, ice, water, and gravity transport previously weathered surface material, which, at the loss of enough kinetic energy in the fluid, is deposited, building up layers of sediment.
Soil liquefaction occurs when a cohesionless saturated or partially saturated soil substantially loses strength and stiffness in response to an applied stress such as shaking during an earthquake or other sudden change in stress condition, in which material that is ordinarily a solid behaves like a liquid. In soil mechanics, the term "liquefied" was first used by Allen Hazen in reference to the 1918 failure of the Calaveras Dam in California. He described the mechanism of flow liquefaction of the embankment dam as:
If the pressure of the water in the pores is great enough to carry all the load, it will have the effect of holding the particles apart and of producing a condition that is practically equivalent to that of quicksand... the initial movement of some part of the material might result in accumulating pressure, first on one point, and then on another, successively, as the early points of concentration were liquefied.
A turbidite is the geologic deposit of a turbidity current, which is a type of amalgamation of fluidal and sediment gravity flow responsible for distributing vast amounts of clastic sediment into the deep ocean.
Sand filters are used as a step in the water treatment process of water purification.
A turbidity current is most typically an underwater current of usually rapidly moving, sediment-laden water moving down a slope; although current research (2018) indicates that water-saturated sediment may be the primary actor in the process. Turbidity currents can also occur in other fluids besides water.
The Bouma sequence describes a classic set of sedimentary structures in turbidite beds deposited by turbidity currents at the bottoms of lakes, oceans and rivers.
Debris flows are geological phenomena in which water-laden masses of soil and fragmented rock flow down mountainsides, funnel into stream channels, entrain objects in their paths, and form thick, muddy deposits on valley floors. They generally have bulk densities comparable to those of rock avalanches and other types of landslides, but owing to widespread sediment liquefaction caused by high pore-fluid pressures, they can flow almost as fluidly as water. Debris flows descending steep channels commonly attain speeds that surpass 10 m/s (36 km/h), although some large flows can reach speeds that are much greater. Debris flows with volumes ranging up to about 100,000 cubic meters occur frequently in mountainous regions worldwide. The largest prehistoric flows have had volumes exceeding 1 billion cubic meters. As a result of their high sediment concentrations and mobility, debris flows can be very destructive.
The physical process of sedimentation has applications in water treatment, whereby gravity acts to remove suspended solids from water. Solid particles entrained by the turbulence of moving water may be removed naturally by sedimentation in the still water of lakes and oceans. Settling basins are ponds constructed for the purpose of removing entrained solids by sedimentation. Clarifiers are tanks built with mechanical means for continuous removal of solids being deposited by sedimentation; however, clarification does not remove dissolved solids.
In geology, a graded bed is a bed characterized by a systematic change in grain or clast size from bottom to top of the bed. Most commonly this takes the form of normal grading, with coarser sediments at the base, which grade upward into progressively finer ones. Such a bed is also described as fining upward. Normally graded beds generally represent depositional environments which decrease in transport energy as time passes, but these beds can also form during rapid depositional events. They are perhaps best represented in turbidite strata, where they indicate a sudden strong current that deposits heavy, coarse sediments first, with finer ones following as the current weakens. They can also form in terrestrial stream deposits.
Sediment transport is the movement of solid particles (sediment), typically due to a combination of gravity acting on the sediment, and the movement of the fluid in which the sediment is entrained. Sediment transport occurs in natural systems where the particles are clastic rocks, mud, or clay; the fluid is air, water, or ice; and the force of gravity acts to move the particles along the sloping surface on which they are resting. Sediment transport due to fluid motion occurs in rivers, oceans, lakes, seas, and other bodies of water due to currents and tides. Transport is also caused by glaciers as they flow, and on terrestrial surfaces under the influence of wind. Sediment transport due only to gravity can occur on sloping surfaces in general, including hillslopes, scarps, cliffs, and the continental shelf—continental slope boundary.
A subaqueous fan is a fan-shaped deposit formed beneath water, that is commonly related to glaciers and crater lakes.
A contourite is a sedimentary deposit commonly formed on continental rises in lower slope settings, although it may occur anywhere that is below the storm wave base. Countourites are produced by thermohaline-induced deepwater bottom currents and may be influenced by wind or tidal forces. The geomorphology of contourite deposits is mainly influenced by the deepwater bottom-current velocity, sediment supply, and seafloor topography.
A sediment gravity flow is one of several types of sediment transport mechanisms, of which most geologists recognize four principal processes. These flows are differentiated by their dominant sediment support mechanisms, which can be difficult to distinguish as flows can be in transition from one type to the next as they evolve downslope.
A powder snow avalanche is a type of avalanche where snow grains are largely or completely suspended and moved by air in a state of fluid turbulence. They are particle-laden gravity currents and closely related to turbidity currents, pyroclastic flows from volcanoes and dust storms in the desert. The turbulence is typically generated by the forward motion of the current along the lower boundary of the domain, the motion being in turn driven by the action of gravity on the density difference between the particle-fluid mixture and the ambient fluid. The ambient fluid is generally of similar composition to the interstitial fluid, and is water for turbidity currents and air for avalanches. These flows are non-conservative in that they may exchange particles at the lower boundary by deposition or suspension, and may exchange fluid with the ambient by entrainment or detrainment. Such flows dissipate when the turbulence can no longer hold the particles in suspension and they are deposited on the lower boundary. When the turbulence is strong enough to suspend new material from the bed or the underlying dense flow then current is said to be auto-suspending. Particle concentrations in the suspension cloud are usually sufficiently low that particle-particle interactions play a small or negligible role in maintaining the suspension. In powder snow avalanches, even at these low concentrations, the extra density of the suspended particles is large relative to that of air, so the Boussinesq approximation, where density differences are considered negligible in inertia terms, is invalid, so that the snow grains carry most of the flows momentum. This is in contrast to turbidity currents and laboratory experiments in water where the extra inertia of the particles can usually be neglected. Nonetheless, due to the extreme difficulty in estimating particle concentrations in natural flows there remains considerable uncertainty—and debate—concerning the particle loading in large submarine turbidity currents and the validity of the Boussinesq approximation.
The Lowe sequence describes a set of sedimentary structures in turbidite sandstone beds that are deposited by high-density turbidity currents. It is intended to complement, not replace, the better known Bouma sequence, which applies primarily to turbidites deposited by low-density turbidity currents.
Liquefied flows are types of sediment-gravity flows in which grains within the flow are kept in suspension by the upward movement of fluid. They form in granular substances where the concentration of suspended mud is too low to develop cohesive forces within the flow. As grains at the base of the suspension settle out, fluid that is displaced upward by the settling generates pore fluid pressures that can help suspend grains in the upper part of the flow. Application of an external pressure to the suspension will initiate flow. This external pressure can be applied by a seismic shock, which may turn transform loose sand into a highly viscous suspension as in quicksand. Generally as soon as the flow begins to move, fluid turbulence results and the flow rapidly evolves into a turbidity current. Flows and suspensions are said to be liquefied when the grains settle downward through the fluid and displace the fluid upwards. By contrast, flows and suspensions are said to fluidized when the fluid moves upward through the grains, thereby temporarily suspending them. Most flows are liquefied, and many references to fluidized sediment gravity flows are in fact incorrect and actually refer to liquified flows. Because fluid is displaced upward in these types of flows, dewatering features such as dish structures, pillars, pipes and dikes are common.
The term gravity current intrusion denotes the fluid mechanics phenomenon within which a fluid intrudes with a predominantly horizontal motion into a separate stratified fluid, typically along a plane of neutral buoyancy. This behaviour distinguishes the difference between gravity current intrusions and gravity currents, as intrusions are not restrained by a well-defined boundary surface. As with gravity currents, intrusion flow is driven within a gravity field by density differences typically small enough to allow for the Boussinesq approximation.
