Surface oscillations in channeled snow flows.

Marie Rastello (1, 2) , Alexi Bouchet (3)

1 LMFA - Laboratoire de Mecanique des Fluides et d'Acoustique
2 Phys-ENS - Laboratoire de Physique de l'ENS Lyon
3 UR ETGR (ETNA) - Érosion torrentielle, neige et avalanches

An experimental device has been built to measure velocity profiles and friction laws in channeled snow flows. The measurements show that the velocity depends linearly on the vertical position in the flow and that the friction coefficient is a first-order polynomial in velocity (u) and thickness (h) of the flow. In all flows, oscillations on the surface of the flow were observed throughout the channel and measured at the location of the probes. The experimental results are confronted with a shallow water approach. Using a Saint-Venant modeling, we show that the flow is effectively uniform in the streamwise direction at the measurement location. We show that the surface oscillations produced by the Archimedes's screw at the top of the channel persist throughout the whole length of the channel and are the source of the measured oscillations. This last result provides good validation of the description of such channeled snow flows by a Saint-Venant modeling.

Mots clés: snow; channeled flows; surface oscillations; saint-venant equations

Domaines: Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]; Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]

Marie Rastello, Alexi Bouchet. Surface oscillations in channeled snow flows.. Cold Regions Science and Technology, 2007, pp.49, 134-144. ⟨10.1016/j.coldregions.2007.03.003⟩. ⟨hal-00163410v2⟩