Quality of landslide motion prediction is directly linked to the understanding of the basic flow mechanisms. Although it is known that landslides are granular mass flows and granular flow mechanics is an established area of research, hypotheses on landslide motion are still based on simple geometrical relations and heuristic assumptions. New insights into the development of flow properties of high-speed, high-concentration granular flows are given by results of discrete particle simulations: rapid granular flows are self-organizing dynamic systems that are forced to develop a plastic body rheology. This behaviour must be described by a coefficient of internal friction !+ that refers to the center of mass of a flow. Coefficients of rapid granular flows of inelastic and rough particles, which are typical for common rock materials, do not vary significantly around !+ +0.45 that is definitively smaller than the friction coefficient of soil creep (+0.6). The motion of the center of mass is superimposed by the spreading of the granular mass that is controlled by the same plastic body rheology. This combined motion is a scale-invariant self-similar process that depends only on the drop height of a landslide and its volume. This allows specification of implications that must be given special attention in the development of future models for landslide prediction.

Based on the assumption that high-speed high-concentration sediment mass flows are primarily granular flows, their dynamic properties were studied. Such highly sheared granular flows are characterized by interparticle collisions. This so-called rapid granular flow regime has been analysed using two-dimensional computer simulations. It is shown that granular flows at the microstructural level are governed by deterministic chaos. The bulk behaviour is characterized by self-organization and an attractor controlling the energy dissipation of the flow. The existence of this rapid granular flow attractor easily explains the linear relation between drop height and travel distance of debris flows. A compelling consequence of the attractor is that rapid granular flow is the major flow regime in debris flows.

The spanwise oscillation of channel walls is known to substantially reduce the skin-friction drag in turbulent channel flows. In order to understand the limitations of this flow control approach when applied in ducts, direct numerical simulations of controlled turbulent duct flows with an aspect ratio of AR = 3 are performed. In contrast to channel flows, the spanwise extension of the duct is limited. Therefore, the spanwise wall oscillation either directly interacts with the duct side walls or its spatial extent is limited to a certain region of the duct. The present results show that this spanwise limitation of the oscillating region strongly diminishes the drag reduction potential of the control technique. We propose a simple model that allows estimating the achievable drag reduction rates in duct flows as a function of the width of the duct and the spanwise extent of the controlled region.

No abstract

No abstract