Rivers in cold high latitude northern regions usually freeze during winter, thereby forming an ice cover on the water surface. The additional ice cover significantly changes the flow characteristics of the rivers and hence affects the process of water and sediment transport. Understanding the vertical profile of suspended sediment concentration (SSC) in ice-covered channel flows is helpful for investigating the sediment deposition and the bed morphology of rivers located in cold regions. To predict the SSC distribution in ice-covered channels, this study is based on the gravitational theory and puts forward a new SSC model by dividing the flow underneath the ice cover into the upper ice layer and the lower bed layer with the maximum streamwise velocity and the zero Reynolds shear stress as the interface. The calculated results of the new SSC model agree well with the collected experimental data, and the accuracy of …