Abstract
A set of experiments on avalanches—each one with a single particle size (monodisperse)—is presented. Experiments were performed with different flume lengths, inclinations, and roughness, for different avalanching masses and particle sizes. A transition from an inertial behavior to a frictional dominated one is observed at a particle size of 1 mm, in all cases. Taking into account the energy dissipated during each step of the avalanching process, we inferred a scaling function that allowed us to collapse all experimental data into a single curve. The transition from an inertial to a frictional dominated regime is explained in terms of the increasing number of particles per unit mass with decreasing particle size, for which the external shear activates a growing number of internal degrees of freedom in which the energy is dissipated. Molecular dynamic numerical simulations showed consistency with the suggested hypothesis of higher dissipated power for larger number of avalanching particles (smaller grain size).
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Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the Geology Institute at the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí (UASLP) for allowing us to perform the experiments. This project was partially funded by Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) Grant Numbers 221961 and A1-S-46572; Fondos Concurrentes UASLP; Ph.D. Grant Number 45697. We also wish to thank all the undergrad students who helped us to perform the experiments.
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Bartali, R., Nahmad-Molinari, Y., Rodríguez-Liñán, G.M. et al. Gravity-Driven Monodisperse Avalanches: Inertial- to Frictional-Dominated Flow. Rock Mech Rock Eng 53, 3507–3520 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00603-020-02144-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00603-020-02144-w