Modelling erosion and deposition in geophysical granular mass flows

Abstract

During hazardous geophysical mass flows, such as rock or snow avalanches, debris flows and volcanic pyroclastic flows, a continuous exchange of material can occur between the slide and the bed. The net balance between erosion and deposition of particles can drastically influence the behaviour of these flows. Recent advances in describing the non-monotonic effective basal friction and the internal granular rheology in depth averaged theories have enabled small scale laboratory experiments (see fig. 1) to be quantitatively reproduced and can also be implemented in large scale models to improve hazard mitigation.