Triangular avalanches and uphill instabilities

1998/01/14 by Jean‐Philippe Bouchaud, Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, Bouchaud, Jean-Philippe +3
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Cryospheric studies and observations #FOS: Physical sciences #Landslides and related hazards #Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #cond-mat.soft

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/9801132

submitted to `Granular Matter'

arxiv created 1998/01/14 · openalex publication_date 1998/01/14 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Recent experiments show that an avalanche initiated from a point source propagates downwards by invading a triangular shaped region. The opening angle of this triangle appears to reach 180^o for a critical inclination of the pile, beyond which avalanches also propage upwards. We propose a simple interpretation of these observations, based on an extension of a phenomenological model for surface flows.

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