Unified modeling of snow and avalanche mechanics using the Material Point Method
Event details
| Date | 12.04.2018 |
| Hour | 16:15 › 17:15 |
| Speaker | Dr. Johan Gaume (CRYOS, EPFL) |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
Abstract. Snow slab avalanches start with the failure of a weak snow layer buried below a cohesive snow slab. After failure, the very porous character of the weak layer leads to its volumetric collapse and thus closing of crack faces due to the weight of the overlaying slab. This complex process, generally referred to as anticrack, explains why avalanches can be remotely triggered from flat terrain. On the basis of a new elastoplasticity model for porous cohesive materials and the Material Point Method (MPM), we accurately reproduce the propagation dynamics of anticracks observed in snow fracture experiments as well as the subsequent detachment of the slab and the flow of the avalanche. In particular, we performed 3D slope scale simulations of both the release and flow of slab avalanches triggered either directly or remotely.
Bio. Dr. Johan Gaume is a research and teaching associate in the CRYOS lab. of EPFL and scientist at the SLF in Davos. His research is focused on the numerical modeling of snow fracture and avalanche mechanics in order to improve avalanche forecasting. Last summer, he was visiting scholar in the Department of Mathematics of UCLA where he worked on a new snow avalanche model in the research group of Joseph Teran who contributed to the snow simulations in the Disney movie “Frozen”.
Bio. Dr. Johan Gaume is a research and teaching associate in the CRYOS lab. of EPFL and scientist at the SLF in Davos. His research is focused on the numerical modeling of snow fracture and avalanche mechanics in order to improve avalanche forecasting. Last summer, he was visiting scholar in the Department of Mathematics of UCLA where he worked on a new snow avalanche model in the research group of Joseph Teran who contributed to the snow simulations in the Disney movie “Frozen”.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Organizer
- MEGA.Seminar Organizing Committee (Anna Lee, Lorenzo Benedetti, Hervé Elettro, Till Junge, Francesco Maresca, Roozbeh Rezakhani, Dong Yan and Noelia Simone)