Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 115, Issue 19, Pages 4827-4832Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1715250115
Keywords
granular flow; creep; landscape evolution; dynamical phase transition
Categories
Funding
- Army Research Laboratory
- US National Science Foundation (NSF) [EAR-1224943]
- NSF [INSPIRE/EAR-1344280, MRSEC/DMR-1120901]
- US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences [P42ES02372]
- Department of Geosciences, Princeton University
- [W911NF-16-1-0290]
- [W911NF-13-1-0458]
- Directorate For Geosciences
- Division Of Earth Sciences [1344280] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Soil creeps imperceptibly downhill, but also fails catastrophically to create landslides. Despite the importance of these processes as hazards and in sculpting landscapes, there is no agreed-upon model that captures the full range of behavior. Here we examine the granular origins of hillslope soil transport by discrete element method simulations and reanalysis of measurements in natural landscapes. We find creep for slopes below a critical gradient, where average particle velocity (sediment flux) increases exponentially with friction coefficient (gradient). At critical gradient there is a continuous transition to a dense-granular flow rheology. Slow earthflows and landslides thus exhibit glassy dynamics characteristic of a wide range of disordered materials; they are described by a two-phase flux equation that emerges from grainscale friction alone. This glassy model reproduces topographic profiles of natural hillslopes, showing its promise for predicting hillslope evolution over geologic timescales.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available