scholarly journals Experimental investigation on steady granular flows interacting with an obstacle down an inclined channel: study of the dead zone upstream from the obstacle. Application to interaction between dense snow avalanches and defence structures

2002 ◽  
Vol 2 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 187-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Faug ◽  
P. Lachamp ◽  
M. Naaim

Abstract. An experimental investigation with dry granular flows passing over an obstacle down a rough inclined channel has been performed. The aim is to improve our understanding of the interaction between dense snow avalanches and defence structures. Specific attention was directed to the study of the zone of influence upstream from the obstacle, linked to the formation of a dead zone. The dead zone length L was systematically measured as a function of the obstacle height H and the channel inclination θ, for several discharges. In a whole range of channel inclinations, all the data are shown to collapse into a single curve when properly scaled. The scaling is based on the introduction of a theoretical deposit length (depending on H, θ and the internal friction angle of the material, φ) and a Froude number of the flow depending on the obstacle height.

2010 ◽  
Vol 51 (54) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thierry Faug ◽  
Benoit Chanut ◽  
Rémi Beguin ◽  
Mohamed Naaim ◽  
Emmanuel Thibert ◽  
...  

AbstractThe forces snow avalanches are able to exert on protection dams or buildings are of crucial interest in order to improve avalanche mitigation measures and to quantify the mechanical vulnerability of structures likely to be damaged by snow avalanches. This paper presents an analytical model that is able to calculate these forces taking into account dead-zone mechanisms. First, we present a 2-D analytical hydrodynamic model describing the forces on a wall overflown by gravity-driven flows down an inclined plane. Second, the 2-D model is successfully validated on discrete simulations of granular flows. Third, we provide ingredients to extend the 2-D model to flows of dry and cold snow. Fourth, we propose a simplified 3-D analytical model taking into account lateral fluxes. Finally, the predictions from the simplified 3-D analytical model are successfully compared to recent measurements on two full-scale snow avalanches released at the Lautaret site in France.


2008 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 77-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thierry Faug ◽  
Benoit Chanut ◽  
Mohamed Naaim ◽  
Bertrand Perrin

AbstractThe influence of a dam on granular avalanches was investigated. Small-scale laboratory experiments were designed to study the effectiveness of dams built to protect against large-scale dense snow avalanches. These experiments consisted of releasing a granular mass that first flowed down an inclined channel, then hit and overflowed a dam spanning the channel exit and finally spread out on an inclined unconfined run-out zone. First, we measured the volume retained upstream of the obstacle and the overrun length downstream of the obstacle. In the avalanche regime studied here, no simple relation was found between the volume retained and the run-out shortening resulting from the obstacle. The results highlighted that the avalanche run-out was also shortened by complex local energy dissipation. Second, we report the study of the granular deposit propagating upstream of the dam. We show that there was a change in behaviour from an overflow-type regime for low dam heights to a bore regime for higher dam heights. Finally, we show that this change in behaviour directly influenced the local energy dissipation and the resulting avalanche run-out shortening downstream of the dam.


2021 ◽  
Vol 933 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Tregaskis ◽  
C.G. Johnson ◽  
X. Cui ◽  
J.M.N.T. Gray

A blunt obstacle in the path of a rapid granular avalanche generates a bow shock (a jump in the avalanche thickness and velocity), a region of static grains upstream of the obstacle, and a grain-free region downstream. Here, it is shown that this interaction is qualitatively altered if the incline on which the avalanche is flowing is changed from smooth to rough. On a rough incline, the friction between the grains and the incline depends on the flow thickness and speed, which allows both rapid (supercritical) and slow (subcritical) steady uniform avalanches. For supercritical experimental flows, the material is diverted around a blunt obstacle by the formation of a bow shock and a static dead zone upstream of the obstacle. Downslope, a grain-free vacuum region forms, but, in contrast to flows on smooth beds, static levees form at the boundary between the vacuum region and the flow. In slower, subcritical, flows the flow is diverted smoothly around the dead zone and the obstacle without forming a bow shock. After the avalanche stops, signatures of the dead zone, levees and (in subcritical flows) a deeper region upslope of the obstacle are frozen into the deposit. To capture this behaviour, numerical simulations are performed with a depth-averaged avalanche model that includes frictional hysteresis and depth-averaged viscous terms, which are needed to accurately model the flowing and deposited regions. These results may be directly relevant to geophysical mass flows and snow avalanches, which flow over rough terrain and may impact barriers or other infrastructure.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-32
Author(s):  
Noorhazirah Sunar ◽  
Mohd Fua’ad Rahmat ◽  
Ahmad ‘Athif Mohd Fauzi ◽  
Zool Hilmi Ismail ◽  
Siti Marhanis Osman ◽  
...  

Dead-zone in the valve degraded the performances of the Electro-Pneumatic Actuator (EPA) system.  It makes the system difficult to control, become unstable and leads to chattering effect nearest desired position.  In order to cater this issue, the EPA system transfer function and the dead-zone model is identified by MATLAB SI toolbox and the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm respectively.  Then a parametric control is designed based on pole-placement approach and combine with feed-forward inverse dead-zone compensation.  To reduce chattering effect, a smooth parameter is added to the controller output.  The advantages of using these techniques are the chattering effect and the dead-zone of the EPA system is reduced.  Moreover, the feed-forward system improves the transient performance.  The results are compared with the pole-placement control (1) without compensator and (2) with conventional dead-zone compensator.  Based on the experimental results, the proposed controller reduced the chattering effect due to the controller output of conventional dead-zone compensation, 90% of the pole-placement controller steady-state error and 30% and 40% of the pole-placement controller with conventional dead-zone compensation settling time and rise time.


Author(s):  
Mohammad A. Al-Shudeifat

Symmetric piecewise nonlinearities are employed here to design highly efficient nonlinear energy sink (NES). These symmetric piecewise nonlinearities are usually called in the literature as dead-zone nonlinearities. The proposed dead-zone NES includes symmetric clearance about its equilibrium position in which zero stiffness and linear viscous damping are incorporated. At the boundaries of the symmetric clearance, the NES is coupled to the linear structure by either linear or nonlinear stiffness components in addition to similar viscous damping to that in the clearance zone. By this flexible design of the dead-zone NES, we obtain a considerable enhancement in the NES efficiency at moderate and severe energy inputs. Moreover, the dead-zone NES is also found here through numerical simulations to be more robust for damping and stiffness variations than the linear absorber and some other types of NESs.


2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Jackson ◽  
B. Turnbull ◽  
R. Munro

Abstract. Lobe and cleft patterns are frequently observed at the leading edge of gravity currents, including non-Boussinesq particle-laden currents such as powder snow avalanches. Despite the importance of the instability in driving air entrainment, little is known about its origin or the mechanisms behind its development. In this paper we seek to gain a better understanding of these mechanisms from a laboratory scale model of powder snow avalanches using lightweight granular material. The instability mechanisms in these flows appear to be a combination of those found in both homogeneous Boussinesq gravity currents and unsuspended granular flows, with the size of the granular particles playing a central role in determining the wavelength of the lobe and cleft pattern. When scaled by particle diameter a relationship between the Froude number and the wavelength of the lobe and cleft pattern is found, where the wavelength increases monotonically with the Froude number.


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