Two-dimensional spreading of a granular avalanche down an inclined plane. I: Theory (Q684881)

The paper continues a series of studies on a new formulation of the motion of a pile of cohesionless granular material down a rough inclined surface and extends the analysis to the unconfined three-dimensional spreading along an inclined plane. The avalanches often experience unconfined conditions or are suddenly subject to a relief from sidewise confinement. In these circumstances lateral spreading occurs. This paper examines this problem as a first step towards a fully three-dimensional theory. This work deals with the motion of a finite mass of a granular material that rests on an inclined plane and may freely spread in the longitudinal and transverse directions. The granular mass is treated as a cohesionless Coulomb-like continuum with a Coulomb-like basal friction law. At first, the governing equations are presented and simplified by introducing a scaling analysis that takes explicitly into account the fact that the moving gravel masses are long, wide and shallow. The resulting equations are integrated over the depth and thus yields the ``depth averaged'' balances of mass and linear momenta. Then, these equations are reduced by performing an additional transverse averaging. A system of spatially one-dimensional partial differential equations in the independent variables x (longitudinal coordinate) and \(t\) (time) describes the evolution of the centreline depth of the pile, the combined depth and width averaged longitudinal velocity components, the distribution of the width of the avalanche, and its time rate of change. Further, the authors return to the depth averaged equations and construct similarity solutions due to the weak additional assumption that the sidewise velocities are much smaller than the longitudinal velocities. Granular piles that start from an initial shape of a circular or elliptical pile with parabolic depth distribution are shown to preserve their shape, changing their aspect ratio, but not the form of the parabolic depth distribution or their elliptical form. The deduced analytical solutions are complete with the exception of the determination of the semi-spreads \(g\) and \(f\) which are determined numerically by solving the correspondent initial value problem using a fourth order Runge-Kutta method. Typical results of the computations of these parameters as functions of the dimensionless time are represented. Moreover, it is made a phase plane study by plotting \(g\) versus \(g'\) and \(f\) versus \(f'\). The latter analysis shows that the longitudinal spread \(g\) grows monotonically with \(g'\). By contrast, for several situations the growth rate of the semispan \(f\) initially grows for some time and then decreases. Finally, some generalizations of this study are discussed.