Riparian or aquatic vegetation thrives with seasons. The understanding of canopies’ Submergence-Ratio SR (stems’ height to water depth) influence on suspended sediments’ transportation is still limited. Thus, Large Eddy Simulations (LES) coupled with the Discrete Phase Method (DPM) are used to investigate the particles’ 3-dimensional distribution in a partially vegetated straight channel. The spanwise distribution of particles is quantified by the Probability Density Function (PDF), showing a non-uniformity of particles in time as quantified by the PDF variance. The findings and conclusions: (Ⅰ) With SR rising, the particles’ depletion effects exerted by the vegetation-side mixing layer are improved along the interface between vegetated and vegetation-side bare channel region. However, the SR has little effect on the variance of the particles’ PDF in the spanwise direction when the mixing layer is fully developed. (Ⅱ) During the developing stage of the over-canopy mixing layer, submerged vegetation with higher SR gain a stronger upwards (vertical) entrainment capability. The case (SR=60%) has a higher sediment concentration than other cases in the fully developed vertical mixing layer region above canopy. (III) The vertical suspension of particles in the vegetation-side bare channel region is analysed. Particles migrating from the vegetated region are entrained into the vegetation-side bare channel region by turbulent structures. Nevertheless, the vertical concentration profile is more uniform in the vegetated region than in the vegetation-side bare channel at the same streamwise location. The cases SR=40% and 60% still have higher sediment concentrations than other cases in the vegetation-side bare channel’s upper region.

The datasets are produced mainly based on the numerical simulations, some exprimental data is collected from published literatures.

The corresponding author is Dr. Eldad Avital. Mingyang Wang is the first author.