Investigation on flocculation phenomenon ofcohesive fine-grained sediment has been a important part of sediment dynamics.During all of three dynamical factors (i.e., Brownian motion, flow shear anddifferential settling) that have been verified to play important roles inpromoting flocculation of cohesive sediment, the influence of flow shear onsediment flocculation has been paid great attention by many researchers (thisflocculation pattern has been termed as “orthokinetic flocculation” in most ofpublished literatures). Among many researches regarding orthokinetic flocculation,the dynamical equation developed by Smoluchowski in 1917 (we called it as Smoluchowskiequation hereafter) has been widely adopted as an origin and basement fortheoretically analyzing sediment flocculation under a shear flow. Meanwhile,many researchers have also pointed out the deficiencies of Smoluchowskiequation (this is because the derivation of Smoluchowski equation was based onsix different assumptions), and correspondingly have amended this equation fromdifferent aspects. In this paper, we attempt to summarize these results,hopefully providing the theoretical research of sediment orthokineticflocculation with some references.
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