Laboratory experiments on shear failure of snow

Schweizer, Jürg

doi:10.1017/s0260305500014634

Cited by 54 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Therefore, various studies on shear failure of homogeneous snow samples under controlled laboratory conditions have been performed (e.g. Schweizer, 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Modelling snow failure with a fibre bundle model

et al. 2009

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ABSTRACT. Dry-snow slab avalanches initiate from a failure in a weak snow layer below a cohesive slab. Snow is considered as a porous ice structure, and the strength distribution of the single elements of this structure, i.e. grains and bonds between grains, shows a high degree of disorder. On the bond or microstructural level, the failure process is believed to start if the fracturing of bonds between snow grains is not balanced by the formation of new bonds. We use a statistical fracture model -a fibre bundle model -to study the failure process in a weak snow layer. The model consists of fibres of various strengths representing single snow grains between two rigid plates which represent the slab above and the substratum below the weak layer. The fibres deform in a linear elastic manner and break instantly at their rupture strength. Broken fibres may sinter (re-bond) and regain strength after a finite sintering time. We show that the different characteristic times for breaking and sintering lead to the rate dependence of snow strength. This is, to our knowledge, the first statistical model to reproduce the ductile-to-brittle transition which snow exhibits with increasing strain rate. When the model is applied to simulate experimental stress-strain curves for different strain rates, the model and experimental results are in fair agreement.

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“…Therefore, various studies on shear failure of homogeneous snow samples under controlled laboratory conditions have been performed (e.g. Schweizer, 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, we test the hypothesis that different timescales of fracturing and sintering of bonds explain the strain-rate dependence of the failure behaviour of snow (Schweizer, 1999). We use experimental results of snow under shear deformation (Schweizer, 1998) for comparison with our model output.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling snow failure with a fibre bundle model

et al. 2009

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“…, an unusually large value in snow characterizing the fracture as a brittle failure [Narita, 1980] and implying very low material strength of the disturbed weak layer [McClung, 1977;Narita, 1980;Fukuzawa and Narita, 1992;Schweizer, 1998]. …”

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confidence: 99%

Solitary fracture waves in metastable snow stratifications

Heierli¹

2005

J. Geophys. Res.

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[1] Fracture processes in layered snow have many implications on avalanche hazard and mountain safety. This paper is a contribution for a better understanding of fracture dynamics in a stratified medium with a collapsible layer in terms of a simple analytical model involving only field measurable parameters. For this purpose a simple three-layer snow stratification is considered to consist of a compact basal layer, a collapsible weak layer, and a homogenous top layer. It is shown analytically that the fracture of the weak layer can occur in the form of a localized disturbance zone propagating a collapse with constant velocity and wavelength. Simple analytical expressions describing the disturbance are obtained. The results are in good agreement with observations in the terrain. The presented fracture process is relevant to the release of dry snow slab avalanches and to the propagation of firn quakes and whumpfs but may also apply to other stratified media with appropriate properties.

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“…Second, we consider the dependence of τ c on T ss . Foehn et al (1998) and Schweizer (1998) observed that τ c depends both on the snow temperature and on the applied shear rate. For our Herschel-Bulkley flow, τ c is the threshold stress for failure of the plug at z = h where the shear rate dv/dz vanishes (note that, under our experimental conditions, this transition from shear flow to plug flow might not be perfectly smooth).…”

Section: Model Parametersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predicting Snow Velocity in Large Chute Flows Under Different Environmental Conditions

Rougier

Kern

2010

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C: Applied Statistics

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Observations, model evaluations, and expert judgements are combined to make predictions of snow velocity in large chute experiments. Different experimental variables, namely the environmental conditions snow density and snow-surface temperature, affect all aspects of this inference. We show how the effect of these two variables can be incorporated into our judgements regarding the uncertain parameters of the physical model, the discrepancy between the physical model and reality, and the observation error. We adopt a Bayes linear approach to avoid the necessity of fully-probabilistic belief specifications, and demonstrate visual tools for statistical validation. Our results represent an important first step in improving the specification of uncertainty in model-based avalanche hazard mapping.

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Laboratory experiments on shear failure of snow

Cited by 54 publications

References 6 publications

Modelling snow failure with a fibre bundle model

Modelling snow failure with a fibre bundle model

Solitary fracture waves in metastable snow stratifications

Predicting Snow Velocity in Large Chute Flows Under Different Environmental Conditions

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