Transition from sub-Rayleigh anticrack to supershear crack propagation in snow avalanches

Trottet, Bertil; Simenhois, Ron; Bobillier, Grégoire; Bergfeld, Bastian; Herwijnen, A. van; Jiang, Chenfanfu; Gaume, Johan

doi:10.1038/s41567-022-01662-4

Cited by 16 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…• The present paper focuses on earthquake dynamics, but the generality of the proposed one-dimensionless formulation may find applications in other geological settings where the size of the rupture exceeds the width of the surrounding bulk, such as landslides, glacier surge, and snow avalanches (Thøgersen, Gilbert, et al, 2019;Trottet et al, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Frictional rupture, the process by which a dynamic rupture propagates along a preexisting interface, has been proposed to control many geological processes, including earthquakes, landslides, glacier instabilities, and snow avalanches (e.g., Palmer and Rice (1973); Scholz (1998); Viesca and Rice (2012); Gabriel et al (2012); Scholz (2019); Thøgersen, Gilbert, et al (2019); ; Agliardi et al (2020); Trottet et al (2022)). In these systems, a rupture nucleates at a given location along an interface, accelerates to a maximum velocity, and then decelerates until final arrest.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How do earthquakes stop? Insights from a minimal model of frictional rupture

Barras

Thøgersen

Aharonov

et al. 2022

Preprint

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The question "what arrests an earthquake rupture?" sits at the heart of any potential prediction of earthquake magnitude. Here, we use a one-dimensional, thin-elastic-strip, minimal model, to illuminate the basic physical parameters that control the arrest of large ruptures. The generic formulation of the model allows for wrapping various earthquake arrest scenarios into the variations of two dimensionless variables $\bar \tau k$ (initial pre-stress on the fault) and $\bar d c$ (fracture energy), valid for both in-plane and antiplane shear loading. Our continuum model is equivalent to the standard Burridge-Knopoff model, with an added characteristic length scale, $H$, that corresponds to either the thickness of the damage zone for strike-slip faults or to the thickness of the downward moving plate for subduction settings. We simulate the propagation and arrest of frictional ruptures and derive closed-form expressions to predict rupture arrest under different conditions. Our generic model illuminates the different energy budget that mediates crack-and pulse-like rupture propagation and arrest. It provides additional predictions such as generic stable pulse-like rupture solutions, stress drop independence of the rupture size, the existence of back-propagating fronts, and predicts that asymmetric slip profiles arise under certain pre-stress conditions. These diverse features occur also in natural earthquakes, and the fact that they can all be predicted by a single minimal framework is encouraging and pave the way for future developments of this model.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How do earthquakes stop? Insights from a minimal model of frictional rupture

Barras

Thøgersen

Aharonov

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…After its first application to snow slab avalanches, Gaume et al (2019) analysed crack propagation and slab fracture patterns and reported crack speeds above 100 m/s on steep terrain. While the latter result was initially surprising, this motivated further analysis which later highlighted a transition in crack propagation regimes during the release process (Trottet et al, 2022). In fact, for short propagation distances, the failure in the weak layer occurs as a mixed-mode anticrack which propagates below the Rayleigh speed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such an avalanche releases due to the failure of a weak layer buried below a cohesive snow slab (Schweizer et al, 2016). Although a lot of progress has been done regarding the understanding of slab avalanche release processes, including the onset and dynamics of crack propagation (Gaume et al, 2013;Bobillier et al, 2021;Trottet et al, 2022), the evaluation of the size of avalanche release zones still remains a major issue. This difficulty impedes avalanche forecasting and hazard mapping procedures which rely on the avalanche release size as input.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…MPM is a Eulerian-Lagrangian particle-based method initially developed by Sulsky et al (1994). Due to its ability to handle processes including large deformations, fractures and collisions, this elegant hybrid method found great interest over the last two decades, both in geomechanics, e.g., for the modeling of fluid-structure interaction (York II et al, 2000), porous media micromechanics (Blatny et al, 2021(Blatny et al, , 2022, granular flows (Dunatunga & Kamrin, 2015), snow avalanche release (Gaume et al, 2019;Trottet et al, 2022), snow avalanche dynamics (Li et al, 2021), glacier calving (Wolper et al, 2021), debris flows (Vicari et al, 2022), landslides (Soga et al, 2016 and rockslides (Cicoira et al, 2022), as well as in computer graphics (Stomakhin et al, 2013;Jiang et al, 2016;Schreck & Wojtan, 2020;Daviet & Bertails-Descoubes, 2016). After its first application to snow slab avalanches, Gaume et al (2019) analysed crack propagation and slab fracture patterns and reported crack speeds above 100 m/s on steep terrain.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Depth-Averaged Material Point Method for Shallow Landslides: Applications to Snow Slab Avalanche Release

Guillet¹,

Blatny²,

Trottet³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Shallow landslides pose a significant threat to people and infrastructure. While often modeled based on limit equilibrium analysis, finite or discrete elements, continuum particle-based approaches like the Material Point Method (MPM) have more recently been successful in modeling their full 3D elasto-plastic behavior. In this paper, we develop a depth-averaged Material Point Method (DAMPM) to efficiently simulate shallow landslides over complex topography based on both material properties and terrain characteristics. DAMPM is an adaptation of MPM with classical shallow water assumptions, thus enabling large-deformation elasto-plastic modeling of landslides in a computationally efficient manner. The model is here demonstrated on the release of snow slab avalanches, a specific type of shallow landslides which release due to crack propagation within a weak layer buried below a cohesive slab. Here, the weak layer is considered as an external shear force acting at the base of an elastic-brittle slab. We validate our model against previous analytical calculations and numerical simulations of the classical snow fracture experiment known as Propagation Saw Test (PST). Furthermore, large scale simulations are conducted to evaluate the shape and size of avalanche release zones over different topographies. Given the low computational cost compared to 3D MPM, we expect our work to have important operational applications in hazard assessment, in particular for the evaluation of release areas, a crucial input for geophysical mass flow models. Our approach can be easily adapted to simulate both the initiation and dynamics of various shallow landslides, debris and lava flows, glacier creep and calving.

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Numerical investigation of crack propagation regimes in snow fracture experiments

Bobillier,

Bergfeld,

Dual

et al. 2024

Granular Matter

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A snow slab avalanche releases after failure initiation and crack propagation in a highly porous weak snow layer buried below a cohesive slab. While our knowledge of crack propagation during avalanche formation has greatly improved over the last decades, it still remains unclear how snow mechanical properties affect the dynamics of crack propagation. This is partly due to a lack of non-invasive measurement methods to investigate the micro-mechanical aspects of the process. Using a DEM model, we therefore analyzed the influence of snow cover properties on the dynamics of crack propagation in weak snowpack layers. By focusing on the steady-state crack speed, our results showed two distinct fracture process regimes that depend on slope angle, leading to very different crack propagation speeds. For long experiments on level terrain, weak layer fracture is mainly driven by compressive stresses. Steady-state crack speed mainly depends on slab and weak layer elastic moduli as well as weak layer strength. We suggest a semi-empirical model to predict crack speed, which can be up to 0.6 times the slab shear wave speed. For long experiments on steep slopes, a supershear regime appeared, where the crack propagation speed reached approximately 1.6 times the slab shear wave speed. A detailed micro-mechanical analysis of stresses revealed a fracture principally driven by shear. Overall, our findings provide new insight into the micro-mechanics of dynamic crack propagation in snow, and how these are linked to snow cover properties. Graphical Abstract

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Transition from sub-Rayleigh anticrack to supershear crack propagation in snow avalanches

Cited by 16 publications

References 40 publications

How do earthquakes stop? Insights from a minimal model of frictional rupture

How do earthquakes stop? Insights from a minimal model of frictional rupture

A Depth-Averaged Material Point Method for Shallow Landslides: Applications to Snow Slab Avalanche Release

Numerical investigation of crack propagation regimes in snow fracture experiments

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