Summary:

In natural rivers, bed forms built of sandy and gravel-sandy fractions may be formed on the river bed at some determined hydraulic conditions. Depending on the type of the flow they can be two- or three-dimensional forms (2D, 3D) and they can have straight or curved crestlines (dunes: barkanous, sinusous, lunate, linguoid or catenary). Any bed form can exist individually (for example isolated dunes), but mostly they occur as accumulated single forms. These forms are placed parallel or transverse to the flow. Moreover, they can be arrangement across the flow. The subject the bed forms arising was involving and still is many scientists from abroad and from Poland and the main topic of investigations. Most of the paper covers the issue of sandy bed forms (in the form of ripples and dunes) which one shaping bottom of the lowland rivers [Młynarczyk (1998), Dąbkowski (1989)] and bed forms which observed on the submarine bottom [Pruszak 1998]. So far, there have been only a few publication in the world concerning existing sandy-gravel and typical gravel dunes [Carling at al. 2000, 2005]. This paper presents results of the hydraulic parameters calculations above gravel curved crestline dunes along the estuary part of the Raba River. The field investigations were conducted thanks to the project 2P06S07528 of KBN. The analysis of the obtained results enabled Authors to get informations about how gravel-sandy bed forms are built and are formed in the river at certain determined hydraulic conditions. The results might be use in practice both by scientists and engineers.