Stormwater detention basins are used to preserve the quality of receiving waters by sedimentation during the wet weather. However, the removal efficiencies of basin were not satisfactory due to the not well understanding of the sedimentation processes. In order to further understand these processes in the real facilities, this thesis therefore focuses both on in situ experiments and modeling of the hydrodynamic and sediment transport in field detention basin and in small scale basin in laboratory. This research was supported by large part on the Django Reinhardt basin (DRB) in Chassieu within the OTHU program and the experimental data deriving from Dufresne (2008) and Vosswinkel et al. (2012). Samples of sediments accumulated in the basin were collected and their physical characteristics were analyzed in order to determine their spatial distribution. Concerning numerical modeling, the hydrodynamic simulations in steady state were performed using CFD software Fluent and were evaluated by the correlation analysis between the hydrodynamic behavior of DRB and the spatial distribution of the physical characteristics of sediments. The bed boundary conditions used in the literatures were tested in order to represent the spatial distribution of sediments and removal efficiency of DRB. The conditions tested were: i) critical bed shear stress - BSS and ii) critical bed turbulent kinetic energy - BTKE. Because of the failure prediction of DRB deposit zones with usual bed boundary conditions, a new relationship based on particle settling velocities has been proposed to estimate the BTKE threshold for the bed boundary condition. The proposed boundary condition was tested in a pilot basin (Dufresne, 2008) and the DRB using the Euler-Lagrange approach under steady flow conditions. The results were not very satisfactory regarding the DRB deposit zones, even considering non-uniform grain size. In order to better predict the deposit zones and settling efficiency in field detention basins, a new method has been proposed accounting for the sediment transport, settling and erosion under unsteady conditions. Based on this proposed method for representing the particle transport, settling and erosion processes under unsteady conditions, various simulations with different bed boundary conditions were carried out in a pilot rectangular basin (Vosswinkel et al., 2012). The predictions of removal efficiencies and deposition zones are satisfactory. Hence, taking into account transient effects on both hydrodynamics and sediment transport leads to drastically improve the spatial and temporal distributions of sediments in settling detention basins.
