Tsunami generated by a granular collapse down a rough inclined plane

Abstract

In this Letter, we experimentally investigate the collapse of initially dry granular media into water and the subsequent impulse waves. We systematically characterize the influence of the slope angle and the granular material on the initial amplitude of the generated leading wave and the evolution of its amplitude during the propagation. The experiments show that whereas the evolution of the leading wave during the propagation is well predicted by a solution of the linearized Korteweg-de Vries equation, the generation of the wave is more complicated to describe. Our results suggest that the internal properties of the granular media and the interplay with the surrounding fluid are important parameters for the generation of waves at low velocity impacts. Moreover, the amplitude of the leading wave reaches a maximum value at large slope angle. The runout distance of the collapse is also shown to be smaller in the presence of water than under totally dry conditions. This study provides a first insight into tsunamis generated by subaerial landslides at low Froude number.

Numerical simulation of landslide-generated waves using a soil–water coupling smoothed particle hydrodynamics model

“…In this section, the present model is used to simulate the waves generated by granular material sliding down a slope and collapsing into a water tank, which is a laboratory experiment performed by Viroulet et al ( , 2014 ( Fig. 2 ).…”

“…In Table 3 , the values of soil parameters ρ g , n, c , ϕ, are from laboratory measurement by Viroulet et al (2014) . And these values will be used in the simulation directly.…”

Tsunami Waves Generated by Cliff Collapse: Comparison Between Experiments and Triphasic Simulations

“…We find that the critical angles of avalanche θ c differ by 17 • between the glass beads and the aquarium sand. The evolution of maximum elevation of the free surface as a function of θ − θ c is illustrated in 4b (for more details see Viroulet et al (2014)). We show that the amplitude of the first wave only depends on θ − θ c .…”

Impulse Wave Generation: Comparison of Free Granular with Mesh-Packed Slides

“…To reproduce this process within a hydraulic scale model subaerial slides have so far been mainly represented by either a free granular slide or a rigid block [2]. Free granular slide material was used e.g., by Fritz [3], Heller [4], Mohammed and Fritz [5], and Viroulet et al [6]; while e.g., Di Risio et al [7], Heller and Spinneken [2], Kamphuis and Bowering [8], Noda [9], Panizzo et al [10], Saelevik et al [11], and Viroulet et al [12] conducted experiments with block models. Ataie-Ashtiani and Nik-Khah [13] and Zweifel [14] presented results comprising both approaches.…”