A scientific hypothesis is proposed and preliminarily verified in this paper: under the driving of seepage flows, there might be a vertical migration of fine-grained soil particles from interior to surface of seabed, which is defined as ‘sub-bottom sediment pump action' in this paper. Field experiments were performed twice on the intertidal flat of the Yellow River delta to study this process via both trapping the pumped materials and recording the pore pressures in the substrate. Experimental results are quite interesting as we did observe yellow slurry which is mainly composed of fine-grained soil particles appearing on the seabed surface; seepage gradients were also detected in the intertidal flat, under the action of tides and small wind waves. Preliminary conclusions are that ‘sediment pump' occurs when seepage force exceeds a certain threshold: firstly, it is big enough to disconnect the soil particles from the soil skeleton; secondly, the degree of seabed fluidization or bioturbation is big enough to provide preferred paths for the detached materials to migrate upwards. Then they would be firstly pumped from interior to the surface of seabed and then easily re-suspended into overlying water column. Influential factors of ‘sediment pump' are determined as hydrodynamics(wave energy), degree of consolidation, index of bioturbation(permeability) and content of fine-grained materials(sedimentary age). This new perspective of ‘sediment pump' may provide some implications for the mechanism interpretation of several unclear geological phenomena in the Yellow River delta area.
黄河以高泥沙含量闻名于世,巨量的泥沙进入弱潮陆相河口,形成三角洲沉积堆体（Milliman et al.,1991）。在黄河河口区域,冲淡水与海水相互混合,海水盐度发生显著变化,并伴随着物质和能量的频繁交换。黄河口附近海域盐度变化具有季节性、径流性和年变幅大3个基本特征（Lin et al.,2001）。
波浪是导致沉积物再悬浮发生的主要动力条件之一,通过室内水槽试验利用浊度剖面仪(Argus Surface Meter IV,简称ASM-IV)研究15cm恒定波高的波浪持续作用下沉积物再悬浮的发生过程,试验过程中确立了黄河三角洲地区水体悬沙浓度与ASM-IV所测浊度之间的相关关系,研究了波致海床沉积物再悬浮的发生发展过程,分析计算波致沉积物再悬浮泥沙总量及其通量随时间和空间的变化规律,定量地计算出本次试验中波致悬浮泥沙总量以及液化所导致沉积物再悬浮量及其所占比例。研究发现,波致液化作用是沉积物再悬浮的主要动因,液化悬沙量占总悬沙量的76.4%,本试验对进一步探讨波浪作用下海床沉积物再悬浮过程具有一定的参考意义。
