Mass-wasting is the general term for the transfer of Earth material down hillslopes. Some examples are rockfalls, debris flows, ice avalanches or soil creep. Not only do such events sculpt the local topography but in many cases they pose as natural hazards, having significant economic impact or by seriously endangering human lives.
Mass-waste events usually consist of 3 phases: a solid phase (a large number of solid particles), a liquid phase (usually water) and a gaseous phase. Capturing the exact properties of the solid phase is a very important task in a number of cases, as some specific properties of the dynamics of the mass movement can only then be understood, like segregation (when for example different sized particles wander to different parts of the flow, changing the movement dynamics). These properties are usually modeled by so called discreet element models (DiEM), that follow each particles trajectory individually. However these codes are usually written for spherical particles, while in real life most particle shapes are non-spherical. This has led to following project objectives:
1. Develop an efficient, open-source 3D discrete element model based software called: MWDiEM, that can model realistic particle shapes found in dry or mostly dry mass-waste events and make this code ready for application to real-world natural hazard events (within efficiency and model limitations).
2. Validate the developed code by comparing its results to laboratory experiments and real-world case studies. Connect MWDiEM with the two-phase continuum model based software r.avaflow in order to create a framework that makes modeling across scales possible.
3. Apply this framework along with experiments to investigate the importance of segregation on dry mass-flow dynamics and runout zone geometry.
4. Determine possible future fundamental research and development directions and engineering applications for both the framework and MWDiEM.
