[1] Through laboratory experiments generating unidirectional water flows, we examine the process of interaction between two moving barchans (sandy bed configurations in a crescentic plan-shape), which may take dozens of years for barchan dunes in the nature. Three types of the interaction were observed. The first type was absorption of two barchans into one. The second was that the upstream fast barchan rode on the downstream slow barchan and simultaneously a newly born barchan was ejected from the lee side of the slow barchan. The third was that the downstream slow barchan was split into two before the upstream fast barchan touched the downstream. The type of the interaction was determined by both relative and absolute size of two barchans.

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The collision processes of two crescentic dunes called barchans are systematically studied using a simple computer simulation model. The simulated processes, coalescence, ejection and reorganization, qualitatively correspond to those observed in a water tank experiment. Moreover we found the realized types of collision depend both on the mass ratio and on the lateral distance between barchans under initial conditions. A simple set of differential equations to describe the collision of one-dimensional (1D) dunes is introduced.

Barchans are crescent-shaped dunes that form under unidirectional wind in areas of limited sand supply. The recent development of flume experiments and computer simulations has renewed interest in the interaction dynamics of two or more barchans. From the flume experiment, four distinguishable types of collision patterns between two barchans have been observed: coalescence, ejection, split and reorganization. We have proposed a simple cellular model for numerical simulations of dune dynamics, in which saltation and avalanche are elementary processes. In the present paper, we first describe the model in detail. The model reproduces three types of collision patterns: coalescence, ejection, and reorganization. The largest reason for a split pattern not to occur is the lack of an effect of the flow separation at the brink line of dunes and the recirculation bubble that it produces. We then model the effect of the recirculation bubble by assuming that strong erosion occurs at the reattachment point of the separation flow. The strong-erosion model successfully reproduces all the collision patterns. Thus, three elementary processes -saltation, avalanche and strong-erosion -are sufficient for a phenomenological description of the interaction dynamics of aqueous barchans. It is also shown that the type of collision is determined by competition between the filling-up of the interdune between two barchans and the change in height of each dune.