Concept

Avalanche

Related publications (178)

Crack propagation speeds in weak snowpack layers

Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Jürg Schweizer, Bertil Trottet, Grégoire Bobillier, Alec van Herwijnen

For the release of a slab avalanche, crack propagation within a weak snowpack layer below a cohesive snow slab is required. As crack speed measurements can give insight into underlying processes, we analysed three crack propagation events that occurred in ...

CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS2021

The concept of the mobilized domain: how it can explain and predict the forces exerted by a cohesive granular avalanche on an obstacle.

Christophe Ancey, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Betty Sovilla, Michael Lukas Kyburz

The calculation of the impact pressure on obstacles in granular flows is a fundamental issue of practical relevance, e.g. for snow avalanches impacting obstacles. Previous research shows that the load on the obstacle builds up, due to the formation of forc ...

2021

Micro-mechanical insights into the dynamics of crack propagation in snow fracture experiments

Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Jürg Schweizer, Grégoire Bobillier, Alec van Herwijnen

Dry-snow slab avalanches result from crack propagation in a highly porous weak layer buried within a stratified and metastable snowpack. While our understanding of slab avalanche mechanisms improved with recent experimental and numerical advances, fundamen ...

NATURE RESEARCH2021

A conveyor belt experimental setup to study the internal dynamics of granular avalanches

Christophe Ancey, Tomás Alfredo Trewhela Palacios

This paper shows how a conveyor belt setup can be used to study the dynamics of stationary granular flows. To visualise the flow within the granular bulk and, in particular, determine its composition and the velocity field, we used the refractive index mat ...

SPRINGER2021

Simulating airborne 'snow walls' of Antarctica using CRYOWRF v1.0

Varun Sharma, Michael Lehning, Franziska Gerber

When a well-developed, high velocity katabatic flow draining down the ice sheet of Antarctica reaches the coast, it experiences an abrupt and rapid transition due to change in slope resulting in formation of a hydraulic jump. A remarkable manifestation of ...

2021

The inFuence of drifting and blowing snow on surface (turbulent) mass- and energy exchange assessed with different methods

Michael Lehning, Wolf Hendrik Huwald, Jérôme François Sylvain Dujardin, Franziska Gerber, Daniela Brito Melo, Armin Sigmund, Benjamin Andreas Walter

Drifting and blowing snow is a dominant process shaping snow-covered surfaces in particular in extreme environments such as high mountains or polar regions. Because the process is complicated to describe, as it covers scales from below 1 mm to several kilo ...

2021

The influence of drifting and blowing snow on surface (turbulent) mass- and energy exchange assessed with different methods

Varun Sharma, Michael Lehning, Wolf Hendrik Huwald, Jérôme François Sylvain Dujardin, Franziska Gerber, Daniela Brito Melo, Armin Sigmund, Benjamin Andreas Walter

2021

Nonlocal Effects Reflect the Jamming Criticality in Frictionless Granular Flows Down Inclines

Matthieu Wyart, Hugo Robin Louis Perrin

The jamming transition is accompanied by a rich phenomenology such as hysteresis or nonlocal effects that is still not well understood. Here, we experimentally investigate a model frictionless granular layer flowing down an inclined plane as a way to disen ...

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2021

Similarity conditions and cube model tests of snow drift and precipitation preferential deposition patterns

Michael Lehning, Borui Zhang, Qingwen Zhang

We explore the process of modeling aeolian snow transport around buildings by proposing a set of similarity requirements on simulating a single snow fall event with drifting. The similarity criteria are used to guide our wind tunnel tests from the particle ...

ELSEVIER2021

Decoupling the role of inertia, friction and cohesion in dense granular avalanche pressure build‐up on obstacles

Christophe Ancey, Johan Alexandre Philippe Gaume, Michael Lukas Kyburz

Understanding the physical processes involved in snow avalanche‐obstacle interaction is essential to be able to estimate the pressure exerted on structures. Although avalanche impact pressure has been measured in field experiments for decades, the underlyi ...

2020

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