Laboratory singing sand avalanches

Dagois-Bohy, Simon; Ngo, Sandrine; Pont, Sylvain Courrech du; Douady, Stéphane

doi:10.1016/j.ultras.2009.09.027

Cited by 14 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…The spectrum characteristics of AE signal may provide useful insights to distinguish different AE source mechanisms. For example, AE signals corresponding to sand crushing may contain very high frequency components (Mao and Towhata, 2015), while friction of sand particles may exhibit varied frequency characteristics relating with the stress level (Dagois-Bohy et al, 2010;Michlmayr and Or, 2014). Further investigations toward a better understanding of different AE source mechanisms should be worth trying.…”

Section: Relation Between Ae and Subsoil Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Acoustic emission characteristics of subsoil subjected to vertical pile loading in sand

Mao

Aoyama

Goto

et al. 2015

Journal of Applied Geophysics

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Section: Relation Between Ae and Subsoil Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Acoustic emission characteristics of subsoil subjected to vertical pile loading in sand

Mao

Aoyama

Goto

et al. 2015

Journal of Applied Geophysics

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“…Dagois‐Bohy et al [] found that the roughness of the particles' surface affected their ability to produce sound, which could explain why the smooth material that we tested (glass beads and Ottawa sand) did not exhibit a significant acoustic signal. Our current hypothesis, in agreement with Dagois‐Bohy et al [], is that drying increases the coefficient of sliding friction of the surface of the particles—hence the decreasing ability of the Eureka and Dumont dune sand to produce sound over time until the material was redried—but we cannot prove this without further experimentation and closer examination of the particles.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many attempts have been made to reproduce such sound production in laboratories, some of which are listed by Dagois‐Bohy et al []. These include shaking jars of dried sand, pouring sand down slopes, and deforming bags of dried sand.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acoustic signals generated in inclined granular flows

et al. 2015

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Spontaneous avalanching in specific deserts produces a low‐frequency sound known as “booming.” This creates a puzzle, because avalanches down the face of a dune result in collisions between sand grains that occur at much higher frequencies. Reproducing this phenomenon in the laboratory permits a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms for the generation of such lower frequency acoustic emissions, which may also be relevant to other dry granular flows. Here we report measurements of low‐frequency acoustical signals, produced by dried “sounding” sand (sand capable of booming in the desert) flowing down an inclined chute. The amplitude of the signal diminishes over time but reappears upon drying of the sand. We show that the presence of this sound in the experiments may provide supporting evidence for a previously published “waveguide” explanation for booming. Also, we propose a model based on kinetic theory for a sheared inclined flow in which the flowing layer exhibits “breathing” modes superimposed on steady shearing. The predicted oscillation frequency is of a similar order of magnitude as the measurements, indicating that small perturbations can sustain oscillations of a low frequency. However, the frequency is underestimated, which indicates that the stiffness has been underestimated. Also, the model predicts a discrete spectrum of frequencies, instead of the broadband spectrum measured experimentally.

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“…[10] Thus the 105 Hz frequency heard during the avalanche (90 Hz for the Oman sand) cannot be the result of propagating Rayleigh acoustic waves, as it was pointed earlier using phase measurements [Dagois-Bohy, 2010]. This contradicts also the model of the frictional sliding interface, for which the frequency in the field (infinite depth) and in the experiment (shallow depth) should be significantly different.…”

Section: Laboratory Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[2] The ability of some dunes in sand deserts to emit sustained, loud sound has fascinated travelers and philosophers, as far back as O. de Pordenone during the Middle-Ages (quoted by Curzon [1923]), or in the 7th century manuscripts of Xuanzang [Beal, 1884] and of course Polo [1938]. It has aroused interest among European explorers of the 19th century, such as Jameson [1830], and Darwin [1839], who pointed that the sound comes from the avalanching of the sand.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Singing‐sand avalanches without dunes

Dagois-Bohy

Pont

Douady

2012

Geophysical Research Letters

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Singing‐sand dunes have attracted curiosity for centuries and are now the subject of controversy. We address here two aspects of this controversy: first the possible link between the frequency heard and the shear rate (for a gravity avalanche on a dune slip‐face, scaling as 0.4g/d , with d the ‘mean’ grain diameter), and second, the assumed necessity of a layered dune structure under the avalanche that acts as a resonator. Field recordings of singing dunes over the world reveal that they can present very different spectral characteristics: a dune with polydisperse grains produces a very broad and noisy spectrum, while a dune with sorted grains produces a well‐defined frequency. Performing laboratory avalanches on a hard plate with singing‐dune sand shows that there is no need for a dune below the sand avalanche to produce the singing sound, anda fortiorineither for the dune's layered structure nor for its particular sound transmission. By sieving the polydisperse grains, the same well‐defined frequency is obtained to that of the dune with sorted grains, with the same diameter‐frequency relation. The various frequencies heard in the field avalanches match the shear rates not calculated from the average size, but from the various peaks of the grain size distributions.

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Laboratory singing sand avalanches

Cited by 14 publications

References 13 publications

Acoustic emission characteristics of subsoil subjected to vertical pile loading in sand

Acoustic emission characteristics of subsoil subjected to vertical pile loading in sand

Acoustic signals generated in inclined granular flows

Singing‐sand avalanches without dunes

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