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Experiments on Wedge-Shaped Deep Sea Sedimentary Deposits in Minibasins and/or on Channel Levees Emplaced by Turbidity Currents. Part I. Documentation of the Flow

¹ Ven Te Chow Hydrosystems Laboratory, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 205 North Mathews Avenue, Urbana, Illinois 61801, U.S.A.; present address: Shell International Exploration and Production B.V., Kessler Park 1, Rijswijk 2288 GS, The Netherlands; octavio.e.sequeiros{at}shell.com
² Ven Te Chow Hydrosystems Laboratory, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 205 North Mathews Avenue, Urbana, Illinois 61801, U.S.A.; Fonds National de Recherche Scientifique, Rue d'Egmont 5, B-1000 Bruxelles, Belgium; present address: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Université catholique de Louvain, Place du Levant 1,1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
³ Ven Te Chow Hydrosystems Laboratory, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 205 North Mathews Avenue, Urbana, Illinois 61801, U.S.A.
⁴ ExxonMobil Exploration Co., Houston, Texas 77252, U.S.A.; present address: Hess Corporation, Houston, Texas 77002, U.S.A.
⁵ ExxonMobil Exploration Co., Houston, Texas 77252, U.S.A.
⁶ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Department of Geology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, U.S.A.

Decelerating turbidity currents commonly emplace sedimentary wedges. Here "sedimentary wedge" is used as a generic term for a sediment deposit, the thickness of which gradually decreases in the downdip direction. Examples of sedimentary wedges relevant to the research reported here include a) deposits in submarine minibasins, b) deposits on zones of lower slopes of stepped profiles, and c) deposits on the levees of submarine channels. In the present work, a generic configuration is used to study the flows that emplace sedimentary wedges. These flows consisted of a succession of sustained saline density underflows, which were used as surrogates for turbidity currents driven by fine-grained material (mud) that does not easily settle out. Although the flow naturally decelerated in the downstream direction, deceleration was ensured by the presence of a barrier to the flow at the downstream end of the study reach. The density underflows carried a load of lightweight plastic particles, from which the depositional wedge was constructed. The experiments were not designed to model any specific field configuration. This notwithstanding, the experimental configuration provides an analog for a) decelerating flows into confined minibasins, as well as b) levee-constructing overflows from submarine channels. This paper documents the nature of the flows that emplaced the wedge. The sedimentary wedge itself is documented in a companion paper.