Experimental study of dam-break dry granular flows

摘要

This work presents some experimental results of dry granular flows produced by dam breaks. Granular flows have been the subject of several researches in the last years, not only in fluvial hydraulics and risk assessment and management but also in many other engineering applications (material stockpiling and freights, food manufacturing and industrial processes). It is interesting, for example, to investigate the fluid-like behavior of a granular material flow. This research is aimed at giving a contribution in the comprehension of such phenomena through a campaign of small-scale laboratory experiments conducted in the Laboratory of Water Engineering (LIA) at University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Italy. Tests have been performed with different initial sand heights and two different sands. They provided data available for the validation of numerical models, not only those describing granular flows, but also morphodynamic models adopted for the simulation of fluvial hydraulic processes by analyzing the behavior of the only solid phase.