Objective
"Snow avalanche is the most frequent type of slope failure in mountainous areas of the world. In total, approximately 15% of Europe’s and 6% of Earth’s land may be considered as avalanche prone-areas. Avalanches claim hundreds of lives annually worldwide and there have been historical cases with death tolls between hundreds and thousands of people during one event or winter season.
One of the main goals of snow avalanche research is to forecast natural or induced mechanical failure of a sloping layered snowpack in order to estimate potential damage to human activities in mountain regions and to be able to conduct risk-oriented planning. The deadliest type of snow avalanches are slab avalanches, which start from a failure of a cohesive horizon of snow, or “slab”, underlaid by a so called “weak layer”. The nature of weak layer deformation is considered the crux of slab stability. At present, the origin of initial failure and the failure process in the weak layer remain poorly understood.
In order to contribute to development of a mechanical model of snow fracture, and to provide tools to estimate initial conditions for avalanche dynamic models for hazard mapping and risk management, we propose to investigate the mechanical behavior of weak layers and their relationship to slope-scale instability.
Key objectives of the study are: 1) To design instrumental apparatus for both cold laboratory and in situ field work to study the mechanical behavior of snow weak layers. 2) To obtain, through experiment, fully operational mechanical laws of different types of alpine snow weak layers. 3) To critically review existing modeling approaches for weak layer and slab in order to couple best existing practices with experimentally obtained results. 4) To relate the micro and meso-scale weak layer behavior to the macro-scale slab failure by means of numerical modeling for development of a next generation numerical model describing the mechanical behavior of a snow slab on a slope."
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
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Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IIF
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Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Coordinator
92761 ANTONY CEDEX
France
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.